Court Opinion

ID: 9681306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:47:56.516755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:33.195928
License: Public Domain

W. C. DAVIS, Judge,
dissenting.
Reversal of this case is unwarranted. First, the objection at trial differs from the objection first raised and sustained on appeal. On appeal it is appellant’s position that the court improperly stated the applicable geographical area for determining contemporary community standards. Appellant’s trial objection was as follows:
“Defendant objects to the last sentence of Paragraph II of the charge on the grounds that it implies that the jury must apply the contemporary community standards of the adult population of Potter County and fails to apprise the jury that the jury must judge the appeal of the materia] with reference to a specially susceptible audience, if one is found.” (Emphasis added)
It is obvious that it was not the geographic limitation which was the object of appellant’s complaint, but the limitation to the standards of the “average person” within that community which was the target of appellant’s complaint. See Section 43.-21(1)(B). Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974): (“This Court has emphasized on more than one occasion that a principal concern in requiring that a judgment be made on the basis of ‘contemporary community standards’ is to assure that the material is judged neither on the basis of each jurors personal opinion, nor by its effect on a particularly sensitive or insensitive person or group.” (Emphasis added) (Id. at 94 S.Ct. 2902.) Compare objection to charge in Frank Ivan LaRue, 611 S.W.2d 63 (Tex.Cr.App.1980).
I agree that “contemporary community standards” are not necessarily confined to a clearly described geographical area, see Berg v. State, 599 S.W.2d 802 (Tex.Cr.App.1980); however, in the instant case, there is no evidence regarding contemporary com*936munity standards outside Potter County. The appellant certainly was not harmed by this charge. Compare Berg v. State, supra. In Hamling v. U. S., 94 S.Ct. at 2901, the Supreme Court explained:
“The result of the Miller cases, therefore, as a matter of constitutional law and federal statutory construction, is to permit a juror sitting in obscenity cases to draw on knowledge of the community or vicinage from which he comes in deciding what conclusion ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would reach in a given case. Since this case was tried in the Southern District of California, and presumably jurors from throughout the judicial district were available to serve on the panel which tried petitioners, it would be the standards of that ‘community’ upon which the jurors would draw. But this is not to say that a district court would not be at liberty to admit evidence of standards existing in some place outside of this particular district, if it felt such evidence would assist the jurors in the resolution of the issues which they were to decide.” (Emphasis added)
There is no evidence in this case of standards existing outside Potter County. No harm has been shown. See Art. 36.19, Vernon’s Ann.C.C.P.
I dissent.