Court Opinion

ID: 9705707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:17:18.435549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:14.004709
License: Public Domain

W.G. ARNOT, III, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
Protections afforded to a defendant at his or her jury trial are not present during grand jury proceedings. 2 FRANK MA-LONEY & MARVIN 0. TEAGUE, TEXAS CRIMINAL PRACTICE GUIDE § 40.07 (Matthew Bender & Co. ed., March 2001 & Aug. 2008). An accused does not have the right to confront or cross-examine witnesses who appear before the grand jury. Moczygemba v. State, 532 S.W.2d 636 (Tex.Cr.App.1976). An accused does not have the right to even appear before the grand jury, either by counsel or in person. Id. at 638. An accused has no right to counsel if called to testify before the grand jury. Harris v. State, 450 S.W.2d 629 (Tex.Cr.App.1970). An accused has no right to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury. Grand jurors may consider tips, rumors, hearsay, or their own personal knowledge. In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 558 F.2d 1177 (5th Cir.1977). Only the State may question a witness. TEX. CODE CRIM. PRO. ANN. art. 20.04 (Vernon 2005); Smith v. State, 36 S.W.3d 134 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2000, pet’n ref'd).
The grand jury that served from July to December 2002 indicted appellant’s wife on September 19, 2002, for failure to protect her daughter. TEX. PEN. CODE ANN. § 22.041(c) <& (f) (Vernon 2003). The next impaneled grand jury indicted appellant for aggravated sexual assault. The two jurors in appellant’s case served on the grand jury that had previously indicted appellant’s wife.
To indict appellant’s wife for failing to protect her daughter from appellant, the State had to present enough evidence to give the grand jury reason to believe that the victim was in danger of being assaulted by appellant and that the wife knew or should have known of that threat. TEX. CODE CRIM. PRO. ANN. art. 20.19 (Vernon 2005). Without evidence that the victim was in danger from appellant, appellant’s wife could not have been indicted for this offense.
Because grand jury proceedings are kept secret, we do not know what evidence concerning appellant’s danger to the child was presented to his wife’s grand jury. TEX. CODE CRIM. PRO. ANN. art. 20.02(a) (Vernon 2005). It is a reasonable assumption that some of the testimony from prosecuting witnesses at appellant’s trial was heard by the grand jurors who indicted appellant’s wife. But only one side of the story would have been heard. It is a reasonable assumption that the grand jurors on appellant’s wife’s case had passed on the credibility of witnesses as *894well as having passed on the credibility of some of the evidence presented at trial. It is improbable that these jurors could sit without their previous opinion and grand jury service influencing them.
I do not find the cases cited by the majority analogous. I would hold, as a matter of law, that Garry Lynn Horn and Elizabeth Ann Hanson Baxter were impliedly biased. Because of their silence, appellant was denied the right to intelligently exercise his peremptory challenges.