Court Opinion

ID: 9818603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 05:58:53.120379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:46:23.024756
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring.
The trial judge who signed the warrant heard the motion to suppress the fruits of the warrant. In effect, the trial judge heard the appeal from his own action in determining the sufficiency and validity of the affidavit in support of the warrant. Although not called to testify, the trial judge was also a witness to the accuracy of the date and time the warrant was signed and to the identity and authority of the magistrate who signed the warrant.3
*314Rule 605 of the Texas Rules of Evidence provides that a presiding judge at a trial may not testify as a witness.4 In his concurrence to Harris v. State, Presiding Judge Onion discussed what was then new rule 605 in the context of the trial judge’s unsworn and uncross-examined statements regarding whether the jury had separated during deliberations, and he considered the treatment of rule 605 by our sister court in Texarkana in Duvall v. Sadler,5 The Duvall court had explained,
The rule is clear, and there remains only the narrower question of the impact of the rule on the contention that the presiding judge in the case may and did give probative testimony. The federal counterpart of Tex.R. Evid. 605 is Fed. R.Evid. 605, effective January 2, 1975, thus antedating the Texas rule by several years. The Federal rule is identical in wording with the Texas rule. The Notes of the Federal Advisory Committee on Proposed Rules describes Fed. R.Evid. 605 as a broad rule of incompetency. The notes in part say:
The solution here presented is a broad rule of incompetency, rather than such alternatives as incompetency only as to material matters, leaving the matter to the discretion of the judge, or recognizing no incompetency. The choice is the result of inability to evolve satisfactory answers to questions which arise when the judge abandons the bench for the witness stand. Who rules on objections? Who compels him to answer? Can he rule impartially on the weight and admissibility of his own testimony? Can he be impeached or cross-examined effectively? Can he, in a jury trial, avoid conferring his seal of approval on one side in the eyes of the jury? Can he, in a bench trial, avoid an involvement destructive of impartiality?
Adopting Fed.R.Evid. 605 word for word implies the Supreme Court of Texas intended that Tex.R. Evid. 605 be, like the federal, a broad rule of incompetency.
The Supreme Court of Texas, as rule maker, has determined that, on balance, testimony of the presiding judge in a case will not contribute to a just determination of issues in the case. If a presiding judge does, despite the rule, testify to admissible facts, is the presiding judge’s testimony to be considered as probative evidence by a reviewing court? The conclusion is reached that such testimony may not be considered. The basis for this conclusion goes beyond reluctance to legitimize the product of an illegitimate act, or under the circumstances shown, to treat the testimony as “the fruit of the poisoned tree.” Disregard of the testimony is justified upon the grounds that it nullifies an involvement in the case by the judge that is destructive of impartiality and enforces the policy underlying the rule.
As a trier of the facts, the presiding judge who testifies must consider and pass upon his volunteered testimony and *315credibility in determining the facts proved. The rule relieves the judge of such onerous duty. If testifying so impinges upon impartial justice as to be prohibited, logically, the judge’s testimony will have the same effect and should be prohibited. The intent of the prohibition is to keep the testimony from the prohibited source out of the record. The conclusion is inescapable that maintenance of impartiality requires a reviewing court to disregard the presiding judge’s statement in question.6
In the case now before this court, the issue is not that of traditional bias on the part of the trial judge but, rather, as in Duvall, the trial judge’s position as a witness and the necessary ramifications of the trial judge’s position. Because the majority does not adequately address this significant issue, I must respectfully concur.

. See Haynes v. State, 468 S.W.2d 375, 378 (Tex.Crim.App.1971) (discussing former mag*314istrate’s practice of signing blank pads of arrest warrants), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 956, 92 S.Ct. 1180, 31 L.Ed.2d 233 (1972); City of Dallas v. Moreau, 697 S.W.2d 472, 473-74 (Tex.App.-Dallas 1985, no writ) (discussing the firing of a Dallas municipal court bailiff for refusing to stamp blank warrants with the municipal judge’s signature).

. Tex.R. Evid. 605.

. 738 S.W.2d 207, 227-30 (Tex.Crim.App.1986) (Onion, P.J., concurring) (op. on reh'g), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 872, 108 S.Ct. 207, 98 L.Ed.2d 158 (1987). (also discussing Duvall v. Sadler, 711 S.W.2d 369, 375 (Tex.App.-Texarkana 1986, no writ)) (op. on reh’g).

. Duvall, 711 S.W.2d at 375-76 (footnote omitted).