Court Opinion

ID: 9684956
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:19:30.842708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:01.287663
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
As much as any other feature of the Anglo-American system of criminal justice, trial by an impartial jury distinguishes ours from nearly every other civilized society. Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; Article I, § 10, Bill of Rights. See generally Duncan v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968).
In Texas the right is especially dear. In part our forebearers fought a revolution to obtain it. One of their grievances against General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was failure and refusal “to secure, on a firm basis, the right to trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.” The Declaration of Independence, Republic of Texas.
“The guarantees of jury trial in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protections against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard1 against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. If the defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge he was to have it.”
Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. at 155-156, 88 S.Ct. at 1451.
Elaborate mechanisms are provided by law to ensure that from a cross section of the community a panel of qualified persons will be seated in the courtroom, there to be examined voir dire — to speak the truth — by the parties. Chapter 35, V.A.C.C.P. and Black’s Law Dictionary (4th Ed.) 1746. Without that examination neither the prosecutor nor an accused may intelligently make a peremptory challenge for whatever reason, Article 35.14, id., or lodge an objection to a particular prospective juror that “some fact ... renders him incapable or unfit to serve on the jury,” Article 35.16, id.
The constitutional right of an accused to be presented by counsel “carries with it the right of counsel to interrogate the members *783of the jury panel to the end that he may form his own conclusion, after his personal contact with the juror, as to whether in counsel’s judgment he would be acceptable to him or whether, on the other hand, he should exercise a peremptory challenge to keep him off the jury,” De La Rosa v. State, 414 S.W.2d 668, 671 (Tex.Cr.App.1967).
The exercise of judgmental hindsight undertaken by a divided Court in Barrett v. State, 516 S.W.2d 181 (Tex.Cr.App.1974), is repeated by a majority of this Court today to abridge not only the constitutional right to trial by an impartial jury but also the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. I agree with Judge Teague that Barrett was wrongly decided, for much the same reasons given by Presiding Judge Onion in his dissenting opinion, 516 S.W.2d at 182.
But the cardinal vice in this situation is initial imposition of a time limitation on voir dire — a matter that the majority really does not address.
The Corpus Christi Court of Appeals found:
“The fifty minutes total time divided among the twenty-five jurors actually interviewed on voir dire averages only two ■ minutes per juror and such time limitation is certainly unreasonable as applied to a panel of thirty-two.”
I agree with that evaluation, and would affirm the judgment. Because the Court does not, I respectfully dissent.2
ONION, P.J., joins.

. All emphasis is supplied throughout by the writer of this opinion unless otherwise indicated.

. The majority attempts to justify what occurred in this cause by characterizing as a “head start” the circumstance that attorney for appellant received juror information forms “approximately twenty-five minutes before voir dire of the panel began.” Assuming that counsel was allowed that much “quiet time” to examine them, he had less than a minute for each one. That is not much of a “head start,” nor would I consider scanning an information card an acceptable substitute for “his personal contact with the jurors,” De La Rosa, supra, at 671.