Court Opinion

ID: 9774743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:32:26.673321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:15.027949
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
The startling fact that an accused indicted for capital murder is ultimately convicted of criminally negligent homicide is enough to cause a practical mind to wonder just why appellant feels offended at the certainty of serving a year in county jail when he once faced the prospect of death by injection. From that and other bizarre circumstances that developed in this cause, one would prefer to regard its disposition as an aberration — without substantial prece-dential value. However, the formulation by which the majority resolves the problem appears to be a harbinger, and that gives one pause.
We are informed by the local district attorney that the problem began when his prosecutor made an “untimely, candid and now much-regretted admission that the State did not intend to urge that the jury seriously consider the death penalty.”1 In turn, addressing the jury panel at commencement of voir dire, the trial judge pointed out and instructed its members as follows:
“This is a case charging capital murder. State law provides that punishment for one found guilty of capital murder is confinement in the Texas Department of Corrections for life or by death. However, in this case the State has made it known to the Court that it is not seeking the death penalty.2 Therefore, you are instructed that a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory for one convicted of capital murder. You are not to concern yourself with the issue of a death penalty.”
The judge substantially restated the situation a few moments later to lay a predicate for his question of whether the mandatory *331punishment of imprisonment for life would affect any juror’s deliberations on any issue of fact in the case. On neither occasion was there an objection, nor when the judge explained that voir dire would be conducted by questioning the panel collectively on general matters, and then individually as need be. The State and appellant exercised fifteen peremptory challenges. There is nothing in the record made in the trial court to suggest that appellant was the slightest bit displeased with such procedures as were employed by the trial court and followed by the parties. Indeed, in this capital murder case, appellant was permitted to elect that the judge of the trial court assess punishment after the jury found him guilty of the lesser included offense of criminally negligent homicide.
On appeal to the court of appeals in his brief appellant presented eight grounds of error, but none remotely touched on the problem now under consideration. In fact, not until oral argument did appellant request the court of appeals to consider the matter as unassigned error in the interest of justice; after that request was granted appellant submitted a supplement to his brief, setting forth the ground of error that the trial court erred in permitting the State to waive the death penalty, citing two cases discussed by the majority herein. That ground of error was sustained by the court below for fundamental error in allowing the State to waive the death penalty. The State’s motion for leave to file a motion for rehearing was overruled without written opinion,3 and we granted its petition for discretionary review to determine whether the court of appeals correctly resolved the problem.
Batten v. State, 533 S.W.2d 788 (Tex.Cr.App.1976) is the seminal opinion in this field of the Texas law of capital murder, and from it we know that “the State may not waive the death penalty,” id., at 793. But, as the district attorney would have it, the majority distinguishes Batten and its progeny and, like the State Prosecuting Attorney urges, the majority sees “no harm.” In the latter respect, the rationale of the majority is stated thusly:
“Where, as here, no right granted a capital defendant is abrogated upon the State’s purported abandonment of the death penalty, we perceive no harm in the abandonment itself.”
Lurking in that statement is, it seems to me, much potential for mischief in the courtroom. See, e.g., Ex parte Bailey, 626 S.W.2d 741 (Tex.Cr.App.1981).
If any error was committed in the case at bar, it was when the trial judge construed a remark by the prosecuting attorney to mean that “the State has made it known to the Court that it is not seeking the death penalty.” Yet, for all we know it was no more than “that the State did not intend to urge that the jury seriously consider the death penalty” — just as the district attorney represents.4 However, even if error, the question is whether it is fundamental in nature, as found by the court of appeals.
Whatever the ultimate definition of “fundamental error,” leading to a conclusion that an accused has not had a fair and impartial trial, it surely will not be less than what a reviewing court looks for in order to determine “reversible error” when timely objection was made to the alleged erroneous action or ruling of the trial court. In Batten, supra, dealing with a situation in which “such waiver [of the death penalty by the State] has been improperly permitted,” the Court insisted that “the capital case procedures ... are still applicable even though the only possible penalty under the *332circumstances would be life imprisonment.” Batten, supra, at 793. Since those procedures were denied in two material respects — right to fifteen peremptory challenges and right upon demand to have prospective jurors examined individually and separately on voir dire — the Court found “reversible error,” without any indication it was fundamental in nature.
In the case at bar appellant has yet to contend that there is any error in applicable procedures for trying a capital case beyond the initial comments and instructions of the trial judge to the prospective jurors, and none is apparent from the record. Patently, once the jury found appellant guilty of criminally negligent homicide, capital punishment procedures became moot. Thus, though the State may have been “improperly permitted” to waive the death penalty, all other procedural rights were available to appellant during the trial of this capital murder indictment until the punishment phase. Whatever error arose from the statements of the judge to members of the jury panel is not such that denied appellant a fair and impartial trial. Indeed, under the rationale of Batten it is not even “reversible error,” id., at 790. Thus, we need not look to see if appellant suffered “harm.”
Accordingly, while I do not subscribe to the rationale of the majority, I find that fundamental error is not presented and, therefore, join the judgment of the Court.

. The record does not reveal any such admission; however, it does show that in reading the indictment to take appellant’s plea before the jury the State omitted the second paragraph containing allegations in terms of Article 37.-071(b), V.A.C.C.P. The essence of what the jury heard is that appellant “did then and there while in the course of committing robbery, intentionally cause the death of [named victim] by suffocating [him].”

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

. The State argued that to find fundamental error in the premises “is to enshrine form and denigrate substance.” Appellant now rejoins that to approve what occurred in this cause would be to permit the State “to use a capital murder indictment to take the issue of punishment away from the jury” at the outset, “notwithstanding the fundamental role designed for the jury in a capital murder trial.”

. In his reply to the State’s brief on the merits of our discretionary review, appellant asserts that the prosecutor asked the judge to inform the jury panel that the death penalty was not being sought.