Court Opinion

ID: 9674428
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:28:28.067642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:27.556258
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
dissenting.
By its majority opinion today, the Court has unnecessarily sanctioned the “intolerable anomaly” and “split in two” the rule of refusal by silence conceived by the Court of Criminal Appeals in Dudley v. State, 548 S.W.2d 706, 712 (Tex.Cr.App.1977). The Court there so characterized the situation where “... an accused’s exercise of his constitutional right to remain silent, of which he must be informed before any questioning by law enforcement officials concerning the offense for which he was arrested, could thus be turned against him.”
Heretofore, Art. 38.22, V.A.A.C.P., the “confession statute,” has been consistently construed by the Court of Criminal Appeals as prohibiting proof of an accused’s oral statements, silence, or acts, if made while under arrest and tending to communicate incriminating thoughts of an accused. Garner v. State, 464 S.W.2d 111 (Tex.Cr. App.1971); Butler v. State, 493 S.W.2d 190 (Tex.Cr.App.1973); Hubbard v. State, 153 Tex.Cr.R. 143, 217 S.W.2d 1019 (1949); Brent v. State, 89 Tex.Cr.R. 544, 232 S.W. 845 (1921). Analogous to the Fifth Amendment of the federal Constitution, it nevertheless constitutes an adequate and independent State ground1 to forbid compulsory revelation of an accused’s thoughts or mental processes whether by speech, by act, or by omission thereof.
Indeed, the Fifth Amendment has been construed to be no obstacle to the admissibility of oral confessions, so long as they are voluntary and in compliance with Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). The entire basis of art. 38.22, in contrast, is to prevent *600the admission of oral confessions except under precisely delineated situations. In characterizing art. 38.22 as “substantially the same as the Fifth Amendment,” the majority ignores the history, language, and purpose of the statute, which accords a much broader protection of oral confessions than the Fifth Amendment. Our state statute is thus not a mere shadow of the comparable Fifth Amendment and no matter how eloquent or persuasive its analysis of the federal constitution may be, the United States Supreme Court will not presume that the Court of Criminal Appeals will modify its interpretation of Texas law whenever the Supreme Court interprets comparable federal law differently. See South Dakota v. Neville, — U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 916, 74 L.Ed.2d 748 (dissenting opinion 103 S.Ct. at 925).
Even when a state court may misconceive federal law, the United States Supreme Court cannot vacate the state court’s judgment merely to give it an unsolicited opportunity to reanalyze its own law. If a state court judgment is premised on an adequate state ground, that ground must be presumed independent unless the state court suggests otherwise.
18 U.S.C. § 3231 shows a Congressional intent not to supercede state criminal statutes by any provision of Title 18, which codifies federal criminal law:
Nothing in this title shall be held to take away or impair the jurisdiction of the courts of the several states under the laws thereof.
States may provide concurrent legislation in the absence of explicit congressional intent to the contrary. Sexton v. California, 189 U.S. 319, 324-25, 23 S.Ct. 543, 545, 47 L.Ed. 833 (1903). It would appear that art. 38.22 is “concurrent legislation” quite compatible with federal constitutional notions concerning the privilege against self-incrimination, and the Dudley holding should therefore be understood to be not dependent on the United States Supreme Court’s view of federal law. Thus, the heavy majority reliance on South Dakota v. Neville is unjustified. It is interesting to note that the South Dakota legislature specifically enacted a statute, contrary to Texas policy, providing that refusal to submit to a blood-alcohol test (or a urine, breath, or “bodily substance” test) “may be admissible into evidence at the trial.” S.D.Comp.Laws 32-23-10.1.2
As stated in Dudley, supra, through the concurring opinion of Judge Onion, the court’s decisions prohibiting the State from eliciting testimony concerning an accused’s refusal to take a sobriety test have rested upon the confession statute as well as the rule of evidence which forbids an accused’s silence to be used against him as tending to establish guilt.
The privilege against self-incrimination was earned by our forefathers only through much blood and agony. The reasons for its inclusion in the federal constitution — and the necessities for its preservation — are to be found in the lessons of history. As early as 1650, remembrance of the horror of Star Chamber proceedings a decade before had firmly established the privilege in the common law of England. Transplanted to this country as part of our legal heritage, it soon made its way into various state constitutions and ultimately, in 1791, into the federal Bill of Rights. The privilege was generally regarded then, as now, as a privilege of great value, a protection to the innocent though a shelter to the guilty, and a safeguard against heedless, unfounded, or tyrannical prosecutions. Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 91, 29 S.Ct. 14, 16, 53 L.Ed. 97 (1908); Boyd v. U.S., 116 U.S. 616, 631-32, 6 S.Ct. 524, 532-33, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886). Coequally with our other constitutional guarantees, the self-incrimination clause must be accorded liberal construction in favor of the right it was intended to secure. Such liberal construction is particularly warranted in *601a prosecution of a witness who refuses to submit to a test designed to facilitate his conviction, since the respect normally accorded the privilege is then buttressed by the presumption of innocence accorded to a defendant in a criminal trial. To apply the privilege narrowly or begrudgingly — to treat it as a historical relic, at most merely to be tolerated — is to ignore its development and purpose. Time has not shown that protection from the evils against which this privilege was directed is needless or unwarranted. Those who too readily assume that an accused who invokes the privilege is guilty of crime do scant honor to the patriots who sponsored the Bill of Rights as a condition to acceptance of the Constitution by the ratifying states. The founders of this nation were not naive or neglectful of the interests of justice. Because the dignity and conscience of man were involved, the founders created the federally protected right of silence and decreed that the law could not be used to pry open one’s lips and make him a witness against himself. The privilege against self-incrimination is a specific provision of which it is peculiarly true that “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.”
If one believes, as I do, that the privilege against self-incrimination is one of the great landmarks in man’s struggle to make himself civilized, it follows that the privilege places the right of silence beyond the reach of government: the privilege rightfully stands between the citizen and his government. In recent legal history, we have witnessed in other states the erosion of the privilege by judicial sanctioning of compulsory extraction of a blood sample, Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966), and cases therein cited, or a compulsory urine or breath sample, and in Texas we have witnessed a partial dilution of the privilege by the qualification that it applies only to “testimonial communications,” but not to “real” or “physical” evidence, Olson v. State, 484 S.W.2d 756 (Tex.Cr.App.1972).
Such cases have followed, in time but not in principle, the holding of the Court of Criminal Appeals which declared in Card-well v. State, 156 Tex.Cr.R. 457, 243 S.W.2d 702 (1951):
The State cannot avail itself of the silence or refusal of an accused prisoner as a circumstance tending to establish his guilt.
Under Miranda v. Arizona, supra, it is impermissible to penalize an individual for exercising his Fifth Amendment privilege when he is under police custodial interrogation, and the prosecution may not use at trial the fact that he stood mute or claimed his privilege in the face of accusation. Implicit in the Miranda warning that an accused may constitutionally remain silent is the assurance that such silence will carry no penalty. Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 48 L.Ed.2d 91 (1976).
It is blatantly illogical to maintain that a refusal by silence to take a chemical test cannot be used, but where the police compel a verbal refusal — a “testimonial communication” — such refusal can be shown. It is also unfair, because it enables the State to achieve indirectly by innuendo what it was prevented by law from accomplishing directly. In my view, the probative value of a refusal to take a chemical test for intoxication is much too low in comparison to its generally prejudicial effect upon the defendant.
When a police officer is permitted to testify that an accused has exercised his right of refusal or his right of silence, the accused is discredited before the jury, which is precisely what the self-incrimination statute prohibits. The privilege against self-incrimination is thereby belittled and further eroded, not only diminishing the efficacy of the privilege but portending ever further extensions.
As the Dudley court stated, through the concurring opinion of Judge Onion at 715, when a defendant verbally refuses to submit to a chemical test for intoxication, he is testifying against himself and this is clearly “testimonial evidence.” I would hold that evidence of refusal is a by-product of the compulsion to take the test, testimonial *602in nature, and constitutes compulsory self-incrimination in violation of art. 38.22.
For these reasons, and because of my fear that ingenious casuistry will further relegate the privilege against self-incrimination to a second-rate position, rather than the preferred status it deserves, I respectfully dissent and would reverse the judgment of conviction.

. "[W]e will not review a judgment of a state court that rests on an adequate and independent state ground. Nor will we review one until the fact that it does not do so appears of record.” Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U.S. 117, 128, 65 S.Ct. 459, 464, 89 L.Ed. 789 (1945).

. Our new statute, art. 6701/-5 (enacted after the offense alleged herein had occurred), authorizes the admissibility at trial of a refusal to be tested, but apparently nothing therein attempts to deny the efficacy or applicability of art. 38.-22, and a possible conflict is yet to be adjudicated.