Court Opinion

ID: 9682603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:14:45.59919+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:40.373457
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
The dearth of authority in the majority opinion, though the State provides a host of decisions it says shows that federal courts have “almost uniformly permitted the use of such transcriptions as aids for the jury when the proper cautionary instructions have been given by the trial judge,” indicates that the Court is not now joining that company. Rather, by holding the trial court did not err in overruling appellant’s “bolstering objection” in “the circumstances presented in this case,”1 and by not addressing at all his other objection that the tapes are “subject to interpretation and that interpretation is contained in the transcripts,” this Court seems to be reaching a narrow conclusion that is limited to the facts of this cause.
In that I find much solace, for were the majority adopting the federal practice I would be compelled to elucidate competing views capsuled by the Court in Lewis v. State, 529 S.W.2d 533, 535, n. 1 (Tex.Cr.App.1975). Still, I dissent even to the limited holding since it is clear to me that the function of the exercise is for jurors first to determine content of the recordings in order then to comprehend taped conversations which otherwise they were unable to understand in toto.
Moreover, that appellant “was a participant in the conversation” does not, as the majority would have it, remove the conversations from the hearsay rule. There may well be a valid basis for admitting them, but the majority has not found it.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
TEAGUE, J., joins.

. All emphasis is supplied throughout by the writer of this opinion unless otherwise indicated.