Court Opinion

ID: 9779249
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:41:23.864536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:24.352082
License: Public Domain

DOUGLAS, Judge
(dissenting).
When a sergeant in a police department with eleven years’ experience is asked a question, his answers should be responsive. In this case the officer had testified that appellant had a bad reputation. Counsel for appellant sought to learn the names of the people whom the officer had talked to before forming that opinion. The officer answered: “With victims of robberies, with people who have bought narcotics.”1
This answer was not responsive to the question. The question neither called for the officer to give a class or classes of people nor did it justify the implication that appellant had committed extraneous offenses or injured some of these people prior to this.2 Before this there was no such implication before the jury.
Appellant had been found guilty of murder without malice. The only question left was the matter of punishment. The appellant was seeking probation. No prior convictions were shown. He was eligible for probation. The unresponsive volunteered answer of the officer was an apparent attempt to get in an unauthorized blow for additional punishment based on something not in evidence. By implication the officer apparently got before the jury that appellant was a robber and seller of narcotics, extraneous offenses which were not in evidence.
Under the facts of this case, it appears that the instruction by the trial court for the jury not to consider the answer could have had little or no effect and could not remove the prejudicial effect.
The judgment should be reversed.
ROBERTS, J., joins in this dissent.

. After the objection set out in the opinion by the majority another objection was made. The court then instructed the jury not to consider the answer. Counsel made a motion for mistrial “. . . for the reason that the instruction to the jury to disregard that would not suffice to remove the harm that has been done this defendant.” It was overruled.

. Another officer testified that appellant had a bad reputation. He was asked, “With whom have you discussed defendant’s reputation?” He answered, “Okay, I have discussed it with Billy Bay Smalley and Curtis Edwards.” His answer was responsive to the question.