Court Opinion

ID: 9647491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:38:12.294525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:50.089376
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge
dissenting.
In his eleventh ground of error, which the majority of the panel overrules, appellant asserts that the trial court erred in permitting Ray Long, an Orange police officer, to testify at the punishment stage of the trial that in his opinion appellant had a bad reputation in the general community in which he resided for being a peaceable and law-abiding citizen.
Implicitly, the majority finds that Long was qualified to give his opinion that appellant had a bad reputation in the general community in which he lived for being a peaceable and law-abiding citizen. I totally disagree with this finding.
Long testified outside of the presence of the jury that he had formed his opinion solely from a criminal investigation he had conducted, wherein Charles Gans, the present husband of the daughter of the deceased, who was formerly appellant’s betrothed, had complained to him that he and his wife had been threatened by appellant approximately two months before trial.
It is elementary hornbook law that before a witness is entitled to give an opinion that an accused’s general reputation for having a particular character trait in the community in which he lives or resides is bad, the witness must have actually discussed the subject of the accused’s reputation with someone in the community and that person must have told the witness that the accused’s general reputation for having that particular character trait in the general community was bad. Jackson v. State, 628 S.W.2d 446, 450, n. 2 (Tex.Cr.App. 1982). In this instance, Long never testified that Gans told him appellant’s reputation for being a peaceable and law-abiding citizen in the general community in which he lived was bad. Long was not a qualified reputation witness and should not have been permitted to testify.
Contrary to the majority’s authority of Crawford v. State, 480 S.W.2d 724 (Tex.Cr.App.1972), in this cause appellant’s counsel did establish on voir dire that Long was unqualified to testify concerning appellant’s bad reputation.
Perhaps, however, the majority has read elementary law books on the subject but has not yet read what it has quoted from the record on page 8 of its opinion, especially the last question and answer.
McCormick, Ray, Wigmore, and all the other greats who have expounded on the subject, or their present day publishers, are implicitly warned by the majority: Tear out of your books on evidence the chapter on how a bad reputation witness is qualified.
Finding that the majority is clearly and totally in error, I respectfully dissent.
Before ONION, P.J., and McCORMICK, CAMPBELL and CLINTON, JJ.