Court Opinion

ID: 9770727
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:19:57.216444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:20.088174
License: Public Domain

COHEN, Justice,
dissenting.
Believing that both points of error are meritorious, I respectfully dissent. The majority has correctly stated the facts and the law, but I disagree on how the law should be applied to those facts.
As the majority states, nonaccomplice evidence need not prove appellant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; plainly, it does not do so here. Nor must nonaccomplice evidence directly link appellant to the murder; plainly, it does not do so here.
The law requires that we first eliminate the testimony of the accomplice. Hernandez v. State, 989 S.W.2d 173, 176 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). After that, there must be some no-naccomplice evidence that tends to connect appellant to the offense alleged in the indictment. Id. I believe there is some nonac-complice evidence that tends to connect appellant to two offenders (Willie Crockett and Waymon Jackson), but none that tends to connect him to the capital murder alleged in the indictment.
I will analyze the five factors listed as sufficient corroborating evidence by the majority. Factors one and two are that five of appellant’s fingerprints were on the outside of an Oldsmobile automobile that the police recovered on the afternoon of the robbery. Limone testified that car, pictured in State’s exhibits 31-34, fairly and accurately depicted the vehicle that he saw the three men get into at the convenience store. He did not say it was the same car, nor did he point out anything that distinguished it from others like it. Ms. Hernandez testified the car was similar to the one used by the three robbers, but she could not say it was the same car. Factor five is that the car had a broken steering column, allowing it to be started without keys.
The ear is pictured in the record. It is a four-door, two-tone Delta 88 Oldsmobile, a type of car of which there must be hundreds or thousands in Harris County. Because the owner did not testify, we do not know that appellant lacked the owner’s permission to touch the car. Of course, appellant’s fingerprints were found only on the outside. Only the accomplice witness, Willie Crockett, testi-*368fled that the car was, in fact, stolen.1 The owner of the car did not testify, and the State produced no evidence showing to whom the car was registered. If it was stolen, there was no nonaccomplice evidence showing who stole it or when. Because we do not know when it was stolen, we cannot say that appellant’s fingerprints were placed on it after it was stolen.
The majority’s third factor corroborating the accomplice testimony is that Limone saw three black men in the store at the time of the killing. Although he could not identify any of them, he testified that one was small and appeared to be 11 or 12 years old. The fourth factor is Sherri Crockett’s testimony that appellant was small and appeared to be 11 or 12 years old on September 29, 1994, and he was with Willie Crockett and Way-mon Jackson between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m. on September 29. She stated that appellant had some money then, but she did not say how much nor did she describe the money in any way that would link it to the money taken in the robbery.
Thus, the nonaccomplice corroborating evidence is that appellant had some generic money and was vHth the robbers 2 to 2]é hours after the robbery; his fingerprints were on the outside rear fender, the trunk, and the driver’s window of a car like the robbers used; and he is a small black male appearing to be 11 or 12 years old. Every case must be judged on its own facts. This evidence links appellant to some capital murderers, but in my opinion, it does not sufficiently link him to a capital murder.
I would sustain point of error one.
I would also sustain the second point of error. I agree with the majority’s holding that the trial judge erred in refusing to allow appellant to impeach Willie Crockett’s testimony by having Sherri Crockett testify to his prior inconsistent statements. I cannot say, however, that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Tex.R.App. P. 44.2(a).
This issue is complicated somewhat because. the State only objected to appellant calling Sherri Crockett; it did not object to appellant calling Willie Crockett. Appellant’s response at trial was that if Sherri Crockett’s testimony about Willie Crockett’s prior inconsistent statements would be excluded, he did not want to call Willie Crockett as a witness.
I assume that if appellant had called Willie Crockett, Mr. Crockett would have testified as he did on the bill of exceptions, which is quoted in the majority opinion. Thus, he would have told the jury that he did not recall telling Sherri that he stayed in the car while Waymon Jackson alone entered the convenience store and killed the clerk and that he (Crockett) entered the store afterward. Thus, because Willie Crockett would not have admitted making that inconsistent statement, and because appellant would not have been allowed to call Sherri Crockett to impeach him, the jury would have been without evidence of that particular inconsistent statement. This seems harmful to me because it leaves Willie Crockett looking more truthful than if the evidence had been admitted.
The harder decision is whether appellant was harmed in respect to the third question posed to Willie Crockett on the bill of exceptions. In that question, Willie Crockett admitted outside the jury’s presence that when he talked to Sherri Crockett on that call from jail, he never mentioned appellant, Maurice Joseph. I assume, as I must, that if appellant had called Willie Crockett to testify before the jury, he would have said the same thing, that is, he would have admitted that he never mentioned Maurice Joseph in his first telephone conversation with his aunt. That admission would have impeached his testimony significantly, and I must assume that appellant could have produced it by calling Willie Crockett as a witness. Of course, if Willie Crockett had testified differently in front of the jury, appellant could have impeached him with his own contrary testimony minutes earlier on the bill of exception. Thus, I do not think appellant was harmed because, in respect to that particular ques*369tion, he could have gotten the evidence he wanted before the jury through Willie Crockett’s testimony, or if he did not, he didn’t need Sherri’s testimony to impeach Willie. Willie’s own testimony on the bill of exceptions would have done that.
The testimony of an accomplice is inherently suspect. That is the policy expressed by the legislature in TexCode Ceim. P. Ann. art. 38.29 (Vernon 1979). The Court of Criminal Appeals agrees. It has stated:
This Court has held that because such a witness is usually deemed to be corrupt, the witness’s testimony should always be looked upon with suspicion. Thus, any available relevant evidence that might affect such a witness’s credibility should be admitted so that the jury might use it in making the determination of how much weight it should give the witness’s testimony.
Virts v. State, 739 S.W.2d 25, 27 (Tex.Crim.App.1987).
Prior inconsistent statements should be liberally admitted. Aranda v. State, 736 S.W.2d 702, 707 (Tex.Crim.App.1987). Even more so then should prior inconsistent statements be admitted to impeach an accomplice witness, especially when, as here, the accomplice is the State’s chief witness. See Posey v. State, 738 S.W.2d 321, 324 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1987, pet. ref'd). Recalling the liberal policy towards the admission of prior inconsistent statements as impeachment and the suspicion with which the law views accomplice testimony, I turn to the factors to be considered in determining whether the error was harmless. See Harris v. State, 790 S.W.2d 568, 587 (Tex.Crim.App.1989).
The majority sets out and discusses several of these factors. It points out that the State did not emphasize the error. I think that factor is not helpful in this case, where the error was the exclusion of the defendant’s evidence. The State had no motive to emphasize Willie Crockett’s prior inconsistent statements to his aunt. The harm is that appellant could not emphasize them.
The majority states that appellant had already impeached Crockett with other inconsistent statements. While that is true, those statements did not, like his statement to Ms. Crockett, describe the offense and mention another robber but totally omit all mention of appellant. While in jail, Willie Crockett sent several letters to appellant. In one, Crockett wrote, “I’ve been told you they already know you didn’t have nothing to do with this.” In another, Crockett wrote, “It’s a fucked up situation, but I’m not fixing to let you go down for this shit, and you didn’t have shit to do with it. I told them white folks that you was never in that_” Crockett admitted that in these letters, he was saying that appellant had nothing to do with it. However, on re-direct, Crockett testified that in the letters, he was referring only to the murder and was not denying appellant’s participation in the robbeiy. However, Crockett had told Sherri Crockett that he remained outside the store during the entire robbery and Waymon Jackson was inside the store during the entire robbery. Sherri Crockett testified that in that conversation, Willie Crockett “did not mention or refer to Maurice Joseph....” I believe that impeaches Willie’s trial testimony that appellant was involved in the aggravated robbery, a critical fact that made appellant guilty of murder under the felony murder rule. Tex. Penal Code Ann. 19.02(b)(3) (Vernon 1994). Thus, while the issue is close, I do not think the impeachment that occurred can fully substitute for the impeachment that was erroneously disallowed.
The majority says that Sherri Crockett testified on the bill of exceptions that, in a later conversation, Willie Crockett implicated appellant in this crime. While that is true, those conversations were not as close to the murder. They were later, after Willie may have refined his account and also motive to lie, as the law suspects accomplices of doing. Moreover, the existence of Willie’s prior consistent statement does not make his prior inconsistent statement inadmissible. The jury was entitled to hear both statements and to give each whatever weight it deserved.
Our law requires that when constitutional error occurs, as it did here, “the court of appeals must reverse ... unless the court determines beyond a reasonable doubt that *370the error did not contribute to the convic-tion_” Tex.R.App. P. 44.2(a). I cannot reach that conclusion with confidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
I would sustain both points of error.

. Under the law, we must eliminate from consideration the testimony of the accomplice witness. Willie Crockett. Hernandez, 939 S.W.2d at 176.