Court Opinion

ID: 9759612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:21:45.689892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:03.308661
License: Public Domain

BENAVIDES, Judge,
dissenting.
I am convinced that the Code of Criminal Procedure, article 37.07, section 3(a), permits trial judges to receive, among many other things, evidence of prior unadjudicat-ed extraneous offenses offered to prove that a more severe sentence should be imposed. I believe this because it seems to me that the statute authorizes trial judges to determine the punishment issues in non-capital trials within limits given by the Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence, and because evidence of prior misconduct, whether finally adjudicated or not, is relevant to reasonable punishment criteria which do not depend on an evaluation of the defendant’s character.
I.

“Deems Relevant to Sentencing”

The 1989 amendment to article 37.07, section 3(a) is not grammatically complex. Where once the parties were permitted to introduce evidence of the defendant’s character, reputation, and prior criminal record, the trial judge may now receive any evidence he deems relevant to sentencing, including evidence of the character, reputation, and prior criminal record of the defendant. Acts 1989, 71st Leg., R.S., ch. 785, § 4.04, effective September 1, 1989. It seems indisputable to me that the only significant consequence of this amendment is to provide that issues listed in the statute, formerly a more or less complete survey of punishment-phase evidence, should now be regarded as merely illustrative and not taken to impose any limitation on admissibility aside from the trial judge’s impression of relevancy. I do not think that the plain language of this statute is reasonably susceptible of any other reading.
*566In the first place, it follows unambiguously from the legislature’s use of the word “including” that character, reputation, and prior criminal record were not meant to be an exhaustive list of admissible evidence. In ordinary English, appearance of this word in a context like the one involved here always means that the items or examples which follow are representative or particularly interesting, but not completely descriptive. See Tex.Gov’t Code Ann. § 311.005(13) (West 1992). Clearly, unadjudicated extraneous offenses do not qualify for inclusion in a criminal record because they have not produced final convictions or probated sentences. See Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 37.07, § 3(a). But neither have deeds of kindness, heroism, and self-sacrifice. None of these things is expressed in the partial list of admissible punishment phase evidence. But that does not mean it must be excluded. It is not whether something is part of the defendant’s prior criminal record that determines its admissibility, but whether the trial judge deems it relevant to sentencing.
The plurality argues that the legislature would not have retained the restrictive definition of “prior criminal record” if it intended unadjudicated extraneous offenses to be deemed relevant by the trial judge. Unless construed as a limitation on the “deems relevant” language, the Court maintains, this portion of the statute, deliberately retained by the legislature in spite of efforts to remove it, would be essentially superfluous. Accordingly, we are asked to infer that the legislature intended it as a limitation despite its earlier use of the word “including.”
Of course, I concede that elimination of the “including” clause and of the “prior criminal record” definition would have been a much cleaner way to express the statute as I interpret it. But, use of the word “including” always renders the language following it useless in this sense. Besides, the plurality’s assertion that it “can think of no other reasonable explanation for the retention of those references and the accompanying definition other than the intent of the legislature to maintain a limitation on the admission of extraneous offenses at punishment in a noncapital offense[,]” is unimaginative. Op. at 525-526, n. 11 (emphasis added). Perhaps the legislature merely intended to ensure that its amendment would not be read to encourage, or even to allow, exclusion of those things which were admissible before. Perhaps it merely thought that the inclusion of traditional examples would be comforting to trial judges. But whatever it may have intended in silence is essentially unimportant to me in light of the statutory language itself.
The dissenting opinions of Judge Campbell and Presiding Judge McCormick, with which I agree in many respects, successfully refute the plurality’s appeal to canons of statutory interpretation. But the canons to which both they and the plurality refer are directed at a discernment of legislative intent. I much prefer, under the circumstances here, the approach taken by this Court in Boykin v. State, 818 S.W.2d 782 (Tex.Crim.App.1991), wherein a majority resolved to interpret unambiguous statutes according to their plain meaning rather than hazard an investigation of the legislature’s usually inscrutable motives. The plurality simply assumes that the legislature would deliberately enact a law providing that the word “including” means “without limitation,” pass another law using the same term without further explanation, and then expect the courts to interpret it as if it were a limitation in fact. Cf. Garcia v. State, 829 S.W.2d 796, 799-800 (Tex.Crim.App.1992). To so construe the law is, in my opinion, to sanction a deliberate effort by elected representatives of the people affirmatively to mislead them about the purpose of important public legislation. I cannot approve any such interpretation of our law.
Certainly, I agree with the plurality that “insertion of the term “including” does not mean that “any matter the court deems relevant to sentencing” is not subject to other limitations the legislature may see or may have seen fit to impose.” Op. at 524, n. 8. But such other limitations may not appear in the very clause beginning with the word “including.” Rather, they must *567be expressed elsewhere, using the language of limitation, not of enlargement. Because the legislature has done no such thing in this case, I am disinclined to read a limitation of that sort into the statute.
On the other hand, I am equally reluctant to believe that the amendment with which we are here concerned effectively incorporated our complex capital sentencing jurisprudence into a fundamentally different noncapital punishment scheme. It has been argued in this connection, particularly by Presiding Judge McCormick in dissent, that our legislature’s choice of the language “deems relevant to sentencing,” which also figures prominently in the Texas capital sentencing statute, implies a rather specific intention by the legislature to make unadjudicated extraneous offenses admissible on the same terms as in capital cases. I do not agree with this view. As Judge Clinton rightly points out in his concurring opinion, holding that article 37.07, section (3)(a) has the same meaning as article 37.071(a) does not indicate that the two statutes always have the same extension. For example, unadjudicated extraneous offenses might be admissible under one and not the other if they were actually relevant to the issues in a capital case but not to the issues in a noncapital case.
That is why relevancy is such an important key to this problem. If the issues are different in capital and noncapital cases, then evidence will be relevant or irrelevant in each kind of case depending upon its tendency to increase or decrease the probability of resolving those issues in a particular way. And because evidence relevant to one issue might not be relevant to another, it may turn out that an unadjudicated extraneous offense is relevant in a capital context but not relevant in a noncapital context where the issues are different.
And that is the rub. What, after all, are the issues in a noncapital punishment hearing? In a capital case, of course, the issues are reasonably clear, at least if we leave the Eighth Amendment out of it for a moment. The legislature has prescribed them specifically — deliberation, dangerousness, and provocation before September 1, 1991, or dangerousness and contemplation of death after. Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 37.071(b). But nothing of the kind exists in our law for noncapital cases. The legislature has not said, for example, that more dangerous criminals should get greater punishment, or that provocation militates in favor of a lighter sentence. But, by authorizing trial judges to admit whatever they deem relevant to sentencing, the legislature has necessarily empowered those judges to determine, case by case, what the material issues will be at the punishment phase of noncapital trials.
Accordingly, Judge Clinton’s argument that trial judges may only “deem relevant” that which has elsewhere specifically been made a punishment issue by the legislature or that which is an intrinsically relevant circumstance of the offense or offender is unpersuasive to me. His argument is based mostly on the punishment theory underlying our plurality opinion on rehearing in Murphy v. State, 777 S.W.2d 44 (Tex.Crim.App.1989) (on rehearing), and upon a belief that the legislature was encouraged to amend the statute as it did by a footnote in Judge White’s dissenting opinion on original submission in that case.
I do not wish to enter the debate whether the legislature was responding to our opinion in Murphy or to some other more generalized concern about punishment-phase evidence when it amended article 37.07, section 3(a). Impressions of legislative motivation generally read to me like makeweight for arguments which should stand on their own anyway. From my perspective, the statutory amendment merely rendered parts of Murphy obsolete. But the progress in our thinking about punishment-phase evidence which Murphy produced has significantly changed the way we look at relevancy.
If there is one thing upon which we all seem to agree, it is that relevance can never be determined without clearly defining the material issues of fact at stake in a particular controversy. The challenge in deciding what evidence should be received at punishment is not, therefore, an empirical problem. It does not involve a difficul*568ty in determining whether some fact of consequence is made more or less probable by the introduction of certain evidence. Rather it is a question of policy, necessitating a decision about which facts really are of consequence when the legislature has omitted to prescribe any.
Judge Clinton’s approach, in spite of its appeal, nevertheless fails to convince me. He first construes what “the court deems relevant” to mean what “is relevant” in fact, and then opines that relevancy in the punishment context is fully elaborated by Murphy on rehearing. This construction has the advantage of historical plausibility and constitutional harmlessness. But, in a statute which purports on its face to describe what is relevant, I cannot imagine that any competent speaker of the English language would say that “evidence may ... be offered by the state and the defendant as to any matter the court deems relevant to sentencing” if he meant to say that the trial judge should cross-reference other statutes for additional issues to which proffered evidence might actually be relevant. I just cannot accept that the statute is vulnerable to such a reading, when its plain focus is not on relevancy in fact, but on the authority of judges to determine it.
Therefore, I do not subscribe to the plurality holding that article 37.07, section 3(a), as amended in 1989, limits the discretion of trial judges to determine punishment criteria in noncapital cases and to receive evidence which is relevant to the issues thus raised. Nor can I agree with the concurring opinion of Judge Clinton which reaches essentially the same conclusion by a different route.
II.

“As Permitted by the Rules of Evidence"

That leaves only the Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence (Rules). It has been argued that, in spite of the “deems relevant” language in article 37.07, section 3(a), the Rules prohibit proof of unadjudicated extraneous offenses because the character of a person ordinarily may not be proven by evidence of specific prior misconduct. Presiding Judge McCormick responds to this contention by arguing that, because trial judges are empowered to determine punishment criteria in noncapital cases, they can simply declare the defendant’s character to be an essential element of any punishment issue so as to permit proof of his specific behavior under Rule 405(b). I do not agree with this position. As I understand it, an essential element in this context would be a fact absent which a particular punishment could not lawfully be assessed. Such elements do, of course, exist in the punishment context, as we noticed in Murphy, 777 S.W.2d at 62 n. 10, but none of them is included in article 37.07, section 3(a). Issues of character, reputation, and prior criminal record, together with any additional matters deemed relevant by the trial judge, are optional rather than essential. The sentencer, whether judge or jury, may consider them in assessing punishment, but is never required to do so.
Still, although the Rules do forbid proof of other crimes, wrongs, or acts to show that a person behaved in conformity with his character on a particular occasion, they do not forbid proof of such things for other purposes. Thus, even if we assume that the same principles apply both at the guilt phase and at the punishment phase of trial, it would not in any case offend the Rules of Evidence to allow proof of unadjudicated extraneous offenses or other specific acts of misconduct by the defendant for the purpose of showing something other than his character. And it is not a question of whether the evidence does in fact prove character. It is just a question of whether the evidence was offered for the purpose of proving character or, instead, to prove something else.
Suppose, for example, it were suggested that persons with a history of misconduct, whether specifically criminal or not, deserve to be punished more severely than those whose past behavior has been socially acceptable, or even exemplary. Perhaps such a principle of moral culpability would not appeal to everyone. Yet there are many who would accept it. It might be thought by some that persons whose mis*569behavior is isolated and infrequent are more easily rehabilitated than those who offend society habitually. People who subscribe to such a view would necessarily deem evidence of prior unadjudicated extraneous offenses, and other instances of social behavior, both good and bad, to be relevant because it actually affects the probability of rehabilitating an accused within a short time. Or they might simply think that it discloses something meaningful about his personal moral culpability.
Of course, it is true that extensive prior misconduct is also widely believed to indicate bad character. But the notion that habitual offenders should be punished more severely is not necessarily character dependent. Rather, it is specifically conduct dependent. Thus, one need not hold that persons of bad character deserve greater punishment than persons of good character in order to favor a greater punishment for those with a history of prior misconduct. The misconduct itself, even if committed by a person of otherwise good character, might reasonably be held to indicate the need for a more protracted sentence. Likewise, bad character might well be regarded as entirely irrelevant to the issue of punishment so long as the accused is without any significant history of bad behavior. In such event, it might be entirely appropriate to assess no greater penalty for the isolated criminal conduct of bad characters than for infrequent offenders of good character.
The essential point here is that Rules 404 and 405 do not make objectionable evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts when it is offered to prove something different than the character of a person. And it is the trial judge who has authority under amended article 37.07, section 3(a) to decide which, if any, issues the proffered evidence will be admitted to prove, because it is the trial judge who may “deem” it relevant or not as he sees fit, subject only to the Rules of Evidence. Therefore, if the trial judge is asked to receive evidence of an unadjudi-cated offense, or of extraneous noncriminal conduct, for a purpose other than to show someone’s character, such evidence will not be objectionable under Rule 404 or Rule 405. And, if he deems it relevant to punishment criteria other than the defendant’s character, it will not be objectionable under article 37.07, section 3(a).
III.
Finally, I think it appropriate to address Judge Clinton’s argument that the plurality interpretation of article 37.07, section 3(a), and my interpretation as well, represents a delegation of legislative power to officers of the judicial branch contrary to article II, section 1 of the Texas Constitution. I am not prepared to disagree with his assessment in this respect, although the matter is somewhat less clear to me than it is to him. However, I am certain that the question is not presented in this case.
My reading of the statute at issue is determined by a fair understanding of its plain language. Although I acknowledge a duty to prefer constitutionally inoffensive interpretations of the law when such interpretations are consistent with statutory language, I do not consider that duty to be implicated here, because the statute is unambiguous. I simply cannot bring myself to rewrite a law to make it constitutional— a different exercise entirely from a determination of whether the law as written is unconstitutional. Accordingly, I think it inappropriate to address unpresented questions of constitutional law not necessary to a fair resolution of the issues actually raised in this case.
For the reasons given, I dissent to the plurality’s disposition of both cases here under review. I would affirm the Fort Worth Court of Appeals in Hunter and reverse the Dallas Court of Appeals in Grunsfeld with instructions that it consider any points of error not reached in its original opinion.