Court Opinion

ID: 9764735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:38:28.55786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:01.204027
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
The general rule is that an indictment which uses the same or similar language of the statutory definition of the offense is basically sound, Art. 21.17, V.A.C.C.P., but the sources cited in note 1 reflect different readings of pertinent articles and do not present a common pattern.1 Faced with that lack of consistency the scrivener of the indictment before us apparently opted for Texas Annotated Penal Statutes, Branch’s 3d Ed.2 Thus, in Vol. 1 at page 634 the suggestion for attempted murder is:
“- did then and there attempt to cause the death of _ by _ (shooting him with a gun,) having at the time the specific intent to commit the offense of murder.”
and in Vol. 2 at page 17, the form presented for capital murder by hiring is:
“-did then and there_ . cause the death of_employing for remuneration and promise of remuneration, to-wit: (the sum of $500 paid and promised to be paid), _ (name of killer) _ to kill said _ (deceased)_by_(method used, e. g., shooting him with a gun)-”
Tracing the instant indictment to its sources enables us to discern that its drafter was aware of the need to allege an act that amounts to more than mere preparation that tends but fails to effect commission of the offense of hiring a murderer and, further, precisely the act thought to meet that requirement, to-wit:
“by knowingly and intentionally offering one thousand five hundred dollars ($1,500.00) current money of the United States of America to Bobby L. Curtis.
Whether the handiwork of the draftsman is defective is the issue so dividing the Court that three opinions are produced.
As I understand the respective positions of my Brothers, they differ over the nature and quality and, certainly, the order of the act that is more than preparation.3 Neither addresses the allegation I regard as that intended by the maker of the indictment to be the act beyond mere preparation.
That the indictment sufficiently alleges a specific intent on the part of appellant to cause the death of his intended victim by using the word “attempt” is supported by what was then a tenuous majority view of the Court.4 Moreover, all essential ele*730ments of the object capital murder offense are there. The question, then, is reduced to whether an attempt to commit capital murder by hiring may occur before an agreement to kill is struck or is in reaching the agreement or must await the agreement and then be a “tending” act of the hired killer. The pleader in this case obviously advanced the theory that attempt lay in the accused’s offering $1,500 in current money to the putative killer, without particularizing at what point the money was offered or, indeed, the manner in which the offer of money was made.
This particular object offense is unique in that it contemplates that consummation of the transaction by death of the intended victim is done by someone paid by the accused to do it. An accused who desires the death of another but, declining to do the deed personally, hires a third party to kill need not take any action beyond engaging the services of the killer. If the killer executes the contract both parties to it may be guilty of capital murder. But if the killer fails to execute the contract, does the culpability of the procuring accused depend on the reason for the failure? I think not. The accused, in parlance of the initiated, has “let a contract,” and penal liability for execution of that contract by another attaches to the accused because the killing is the natural consequence of what the accused generated and put in operation. That is why, it seems to me, in this particular situation the most critical element of an attempt is the intent to cause death by hiring, and the nature and quality of the “tending” act are only relatively significant.
It must be remembered that criminal attempt is an inchoate offense.5 As the practice commentary following V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 15.01 observes, since inchoate offenses “presuppose an intent to commit another offense and the actor, by hypothesis, ignores the sanction for the object offense, they provide no significant deterrence . (but they do) . . . perform other legitimate penological functions in permitting punishment of those who demonstrate a disposition toward criminality before they do any real harm . . . ” Further we are assured, and have independently confirmed, that § 15.01 defines the offense of criminal attempt “in traditional terms.” See generally United States v. Mandujano, 499 F.2d 370, 372-379 (5 Cir. 1974) in which Rives, C. J. collects a host of authorities and distills their holdings down to two basic ingredients of criminal attempt; 6 22 C.J.S. p. 226, Criminal Law § 74, Attempts; and, for early statements of the terms in Texas, Wood v. State, 27 Tex.App. 393, 11 S.W. 449 (Ct.App.1889)7 and Watts v. State, 30 Tex.App. 533, 17 S.W. 1092 (1891).8
*731Because the essential evil in this category of capital murder is remuneration, either paid or promised, an accused may be guilty of criminal solicitation if, with intent that someone be killed by another for remuneration, that accused requests, commands or attempts to induce the other person to kill with a promise to pay for the deed; the offense is complete without any agreement by the other person to kill. For the same reason, an accused may be guilty of criminal conspiracy if, on the same basis, an agreement is reached and the other party— or, in another context, the accused — performs just one otherwise innocent overt act in pursuance of the agreement.9 Neither offense demands that the second party engage in a single act of criminal misconduct in order that the initiating solicitor or conspirator be charged with committing the inchoate offense and, if found guilty, be punished as a first degree felon. How is it, then, that the offense of attempted capital murder by hiring requires an agreement to kill followed by criminal misconduct that fails its objective before the originator of the scheme may be charged with that inchoate offense and, if found guilty, be punished as first degree felon? The fundamental vice in each offense is precisely the same: the specific intent in the mind of the accused that another be killed by a hired gun. Only the manner by which that intent manifests itself is somewhat different: an attempt, a solicitation or a conspiracy. Money is, to paraphrase, the root of each manifestation of evil — just the mechanics of moving it about vary. In this light actually offering hard cash for the undertaking seems more definitive than an unsecured promise to pay it in the future.
Accordingly, I would hold that the indictment in this case, though awkwardly worded, by its “offering” clause does allege an act amounting to more than mere preparation that tends to effect commission of hiring to murder. When, in relation to other events, and the manner in which the offer was made are, in my view, evidentiary matters that need not be specified in an indictment.
For these reasons I conclude that the indictment is not defective and concur in overruling grounds of error contending otherwise.

. One who resorts to form books for guidance in drawing an indictment charging the offense of criminal attempt to hire for murder is in for a mind boggling experience. See and compare 7 Texas Practice 29 and 34, Morrison & Blackwell, Criminal Forms Annotated (8th Ed.1977) §§ 2.01 and 4.06; 1 Texas Annotated Penal Statutes, Branch’s 3d Ed. (1974) 634, § 15.01 and 2 Texas Annotated Penal Statutes, Branch’s 3d Ed. (1974) 17, § 19.03; McClung, Jury Charges for Texas Criminal Practice (Rev. Ed.1979) 286 and 293-294. Compare also Texas Jury Pattern Criminal Charges (1975) 91, CPJC 15.01 and 127, CPJC 19.03(a)(3); 8 Texas Practice 246 and 267, Morrison & Blackwell, Criminal Forms Annotated (8th Ed.1977) §§ 91.01 and 93.06.

. Influenced, perhaps, by the acknowledgement in its preface that the work was prepared with the assistance of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

. The cases of attempted capital murder of a peace officer are really not all that helpful here. Usually each is a ‘.‘one on one” situation, arising extemporaneously, in which the accused intentionally or knowingly and personally engaged in some act designed to kill, but failed. Of course, in neither attempt situation is there an actual killing. The problem, then, is at what point did an effort that failed in its objective amount to an attempt. In the peace officer cases the solution is easy because immediately and contemporaneously there exists every factor necessary for capital murder — except death. In the hiring cases, though, the problem solver must decide when all requisite elements — excluding death — coalesce into an attempt to cause death. Given an addition of at least one other essential party and quite different policy considerations in the latter situation, solutions to the former do not necessarily control.

.See Dovalina v. State, 564 S.W.2d 378 (Tex. Cr.App.1978) and Telfair v. State, 565 S.W.2d 522 (Tex.Cr.App.1978). If the 1978 alignment still holds today, my vote will convert what was then minority expression to a majority holding now.

. Inchoate means “imperfect; partial; unfinished; begun, but not completed . . Black’s Law Dictionary, Revised Fourth Edition, 904.

. “First, the defendant must have been acting with the kind of culpability otherwise required for the commission of the crime which he is charged with attempting. * * * Second, the defendant must have engaged in conduct which constitutes a substantial step toward commission of the crime. A substantial step must be conduct strongly corroborative of the firmness of the defendant’s criminal intent.” Note, however, that our State requires only an act that "tends” to effect commission of the object offense, not that it be substantial.

. Quoting approvingly from 1 Bishop Criminal Law §§ 727, 728:
“If a man undertakes to do a particular wrong of the indictable sort, and does some act towards it, but fails to complete what he meant, his evil intent and act together constitute ... a common-law crime, provided that act is not too trivial and small for the law’s notice; for the intent is sufficient, and the adequacy of the act is the only further object of inquiry. Therefore an attempt is an intent to do a particular thing which the law, common or statutory, has declared to be a crime, coupled with an act towards the doing sufficient in magnitude and proximity to the fact intended to be taken cognizance of by the law, that does not concern itself with things trivial and small; or, more briefly, an attempt is an intent to do a particular criminal thing, with act towards it falling short of the thing intended.”

.Quoting approvingly from 9 Crim.Law.Mag. 162:
“So long as the crime remains in mere intention, it is not punishable; but, if an attempt is made to execute the intention which falls short of its consummation, a crime is committed. Here an act and intent coalesce; the *731intent has passed into action, although that action was futile.”

. See United States v. Jackson, 435 F.Supp. 434, 439 (E.D.N.Y.1976): An overt act may further a conspiracy regardless of its importance to the overall scheme whereas an attempt involves a “manifestation of dangerousness.”