Court Opinion

ID: 9644761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:04:23.432502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:18.036333
License: Public Domain

CAMPBELL, Judge,
dissenting.
The question presented by appellant Kenneth Wayne First’s first and second points of error is whether, at the punishment stage of his capital murder trial, the jury was able to fully consider and give effect to certain mitigating evidence, as required by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Since I disagree with the majority’s answer to that question, I must dissent.
At around one o’clock on the morning of May 30, 1986, appellant and his companion, Pierce Horton, were assaulted by J. Luke Davis and Kimberly Sue Holley in the parking lot of a Lubbock bar. While Holley held Horton at knifepoint, Davis overpowered appellant and slammed his head repeatedly against a concrete sidewalk and the bumper of a parked car. After a few moments, appellant managed to free himself and to make his way to Horton’s car, where he got Horton’s revolver. Appellant fired a shot, which hit a passing car, and then fired at Davis and Holley, who were attempting to flee. Appellant shot them both dead. Horton then hid the revolver beneath some bushes nearby. Soon thereafter, both appellant and Horton were arrested.
On June 18, 1986, the Lubbock County grand jury indicted appellant for the capital murder of Holley under Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(6)(A), which provides that a person commits a capital offense if he (1) commits murder and (2) “murders more than one person during the same criminal transaction.” 1 Appellant was brought to trial in February 1987. Although the jurors at appellant’s trial were instructed on capital murder (of Holley) and the lesser included offenses of murder (of Holley and Davis) and voluntary manslaughter (of Holley and Davis), they found appellant guilty of capital murder.
At the punishment stage, in accordance with subsections (b) and (f)2 of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 37.071, the trial court submitted the following special issues to the jury:
*846(1) Was the conduct of the defendant, KENNETH WAYNE FIRST, that caused the death of Kimberly Sue Holley committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that the death of Kimberly Sue Holley would result?
(2) Is there a probability that the defendant, KENNETH WAYNE FIRST, would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society?
(3) Do you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the conduct of the defendant in killing Kimberly Sue Holley was unreasonable in response to the provocation, if any, by Kimberly Sue Holley?
Special issues (1) and (3) were submitted to the jury only with respect to appellant’s conduct in murdering Holley, because she was the first victim listed in the indictment.3
The trial judge instructed the jurors that the burden was on the State to prove each special issue beyond a reasonable doubt, and that
in determining each of these Special Issues you may take into consideration all of the evidence submitted to you in the full trial of the case, that is, all of the • evidence submitted to you in the first part of this case wherein you were called upon to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and all of the evidence, if any, admitted before you in the second part of the trial wherein you are called upon to determine the answers to Special Issues hereby submitted to you.
(Emphasis added.) The jurors subsequently answered each special issue in the affirmative.
Appellant argues to this Court, as he did to the trial court, that his Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment was violated because the jurors at his trial, in answering the three special punishment issues, were unable to consider and give effect to the mitigating evidence of Davis’ assault upon him. Appellant insists that special issue three should have been submitted to the jury with regard to his conduct in murdering Holley and Davis.
Remarkably, a majority of this Court has now accepted appellant’s argument. The majority opinion expresses the belief that “the Texas capital sentencing scheme operated in an unconstitutional manner as applied to appellant” because special issue three, as submitted, “impermissibly precluded the jury’s consideration of the mitigating evidence as it related to the provocation of Davis.” Judge Miller, in his concurrence, worries that special issue three “encouraged” the jury not to consider the provocation by Davis. What I find quite surprising is that neither opinion explains why special issue two was not an adequate vehicle for the jury’s consideration of the evidence in question.
The Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against “cruel and unusual punishments” was made applicable to the states by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 666, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 1420, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962). And, as everyone by now knows, it is settled that that Eighth Amendment guarantee requires the sen-tencer in a capital murder case to make an individualized assessment of the appropriateness of the death penalty in light of the defendant’s moral, as opposed to factual, blameworthiness. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 317, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 2946, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989). And, in order to make this individualized assessment, the sentencer must be able to fully consider and give effect to any mitigating evidence regarding the defendant’s character and record and *847the circumstances of the offense. Id., at 318-26, 109 S.Ct. at 2947-2951.
The evidence of Davis’ assault upon appellant was certainly mitigating, because reasonable jurors could conclude the assault lessened appellant’s moral blameworthiness for the crime of which he was found guilty. See Nobles v. State, 843 S.W.2d 503, (Tex.Cr.App.1992). Since that evidence was mitigating, the Eighth Amendment required that the jury have available to it some vehicle for giving effect to that evidence. Special issue two was such a vehicle. The only mitigating quality associated with the evidence of Davis’ assault was its implication that appellant would not have killed but for the assault. Therefore, the jury was perfectly able to consider and give effect to that evidence in its determination of whether there was a probability appellant would be a danger in the future. There is no reason to believe the jury did not consider the evidence in question when it answered special issue two. This is especially so given the fact the jury was specifically instructed that it could consider all the evidence before it in answering all three special issues. See Lackey v. State, 819 S.W.2d 111, 134 n. 9 (Tex.Cr.App.1989) (op. on reh’g).
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reached the same conclusion in an essentially identical case. In White v. Collins, 959 F.2d 1319 (5th Cir. 1992), Texas defendant Billy Wayne White had been convicted of the capital murder of a furniture store employee in Houston. Although White had not requested the state trial court to submit the third special issue on provocation to the jury, he sought a stay of execution in the Fifth Circuit on the ground that, because the third special issue had not been submitted, the jury had been unable to consider and give effect to evidence that the victim provoked her murder by spraying White with mace. The Fifth Circuit denied the stay, explaining:
If the jury believed White shot [the deceased] as a reflex after she sprayed him with mace, the jury was able to give effect to the mitigating value of this perception. [The jury] could have given effect to [the evidence of] provocation by finding that ordinarily, White would be nonviolent. Such an understanding of the evidence would support a negative response to the second issue on future dangerousness.... The special issues submitted to the jury thus provided an adequate vehicle for the jury to respond to the mitigating effect of the alleged provocation by the victim.
White v. Collins, 959 F.2d at 1324.
I believe, along with the Fifth Circuit, that special issue two is a perfectly adequate vehicle under the Eighth Amendment, and I also believe the jury in this case could have considered and given full effect to the provocation of Davis under special issue two. Because the majority of this Court has not explained why the Fifth Circuit and I are wrong, I respectfully dissent.
I would sustain neither appellant’s first nor second point of error but would proceed to address his remaining points.
McCORMICK, P.J., and BENAVIDES, J., join.

. I express no opinion regarding the appropriateness of charging capital murder under the facts of this case. That call was for the prosecutor, the grand jury, and the petit jury to make, not for me or this Court to make.

. At the time of appellant’s trial, Article 37.-071(f) provided:
If a defendant is convicted of an offense under Section 19.03(a)(6), Penal Code, the court shall submit the three issues under Subsection (b) of this article only with regard to the conduct of the defendant in murdering the deceased individual first named in the indictment.

. We pointed out earlier this term in Narvaiz v. State, 840 S.W.2d 415, 415, No. 70,810 (Tex.Cr. App.1992), that
[a] person convicted and punished for capital murder under the statutory scheme created by § 19.03(a)(6)(A) and Article 37.071(f) is, in plain effect, convicted and punished for the murder of the first person listed in the indictment ..., whether or not that person was the person who was murdered first in time. The interaction of these two statutes makes the legislative intent quite clear. Thus, ..., under the statutory scheme the murder of the second person listed in the indictment is merely the aggravating circumstance that renders "capital” the murder of the person listed first.
(Emphasis in original.)