Court Opinion

ID: 9770656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:18:23.531574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:19.736076
License: Public Domain

WOODLEY, Presiding Judge
(dissenting).
The opinion on rehearing errs in again disregarding the fact shown by the record that Bill of Exception No. 9 was not filed with the clerk as authorized by Art. 760d V.A.C.C.P., but was presented to the trial judge who qualified it and it was then filed with the clerk with the court’s qualification as a part of it.
The majority now base the reversal solely upon the admission of evidence of an extraneous offense. They ’now conclude that *631there was no reversible error in the argument, but they repeat the erroneous holding announced in the opinion to which I originally dissented — that the trial court’s qualification to Bill of Exception No. 9 “was tantamount to no action at all,” and the bill certifies reversible error.
The basis for holding that the certification of error in Bill No. 9 is not binding on this Court is that the informal bill in the statement of facts reflects the absence of-a timely objection.
If the majority is correct and bills of exception certifying error are to be considered as approved by the trial judge despite his notation thereon that the contents of the bill “are only contentions of the defendant,” Bill of Exception No. 9 certifies reversible error.
I respectfully dissent (1) to the failure of the majority to recognize and treat the bill of exception as qualified by the trial judge before it was filed; (2) to the holding that the trial judge’s qualification of Bill of Exception No. 9 “was tantamount to no action at all,” and (3)'to the holding that in the ábsence of timely objection shown elsewhere in the record reversible error is not shown by “highly prejudicial and inflammatory statements to the jury, which were outside of the record, not provoked or in response to any argument of Defendant’s counsel and which amounted to vilification and abuse not only of the Defendant but his Attorney as well when he time and again abused Defendant and his Attorney, * * * All of which prejudicial and highly inflammatory arguments of the State’s Attorney, Eddie Davis, was outside of the record, not in response to anything the Defendant had said or done, and was continuously repeated while Defendant’s objections were being sustained by the Court.”
The bill of exception without the qualification of the trial court certifies that such an argument was made. It further certifies “ * * * that the foregoing prejudicial argument as well as numerous other personal vilifications and abuse of Defendant’s counsel with which the record is replete, shows peradventure of a doubt that the Defendant suffered irreparable damage and injury which could not be lessened or mitigated by the Court’s rulings.” The absence of a timely objection does not show this certification to be erroneous.