Court Opinion

ID: 9681565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:52:42.740069+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:34.455488
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
I join the judgment of the Court in this cause, but not its opinion. As I understand *955it, the plurality opinion holds that the trial judge must make a threshold determination that the defendant has been shown beyond a reasonable doubt to have perpetrated an extraneous offense before he can admit it into evidence at the punishment phase of a non-capital trial, and then he must instruct the jury that it must also find the defendant committed the extraneous offense to that level of confidence before it can consider it. Plurality, Op. at 954. I prefer instead Judge Meyers’ view that “the trial judge in the instant cause should not have treated the question of appellant’s culpability for the extraneous offense sought to be proven at his trial as a preliminary question of fact affecting admissibility under [Tex.R.Cr.Evid.,] Rule 104(a).” Meyers, J., concurring, Op. at -. Unless the proffering party presents no evidence from which a rational jury could find the defendant committed the extraneous offense, the trial court should simply admit it and instruct the jurors only to consider it if they find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed it. This view is generally in keeping with the Court’s treatment of extraneous offense evidence at the guilt phase of trial. Harrell v. State, 884 S.W.2d 154 (Tex.Cr.App.1994); George v. State, 890 S.W.2d 73 (Tex.Cr.App.1994).
Judge McCormick invokes language from my separate opinions in Harrell and George to complain of the Court’s holding in this ease. But I did not take issue with the Court’s conclusions in Harrell and George so much as its methodology. In Harrell the Court found that the trial court must determine that a rational jury must be able to find the defendant committed the extraneous offense beyond a reasonable doubt before admitting it. The Court took pains to emphasize, however, that the trial judge need not himself believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the extraneous offense before evidence of that offense becomes admissible.* To the extent the plurality opinion today might be read to require the trial judge to satisfy himself beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant committed the extraneous offense before admitting evidence of it at the punishment phase of trial, I cannot join that opinion. Because Judge Meyers’ concurring opinion seems to me more clearly consistent with the holdings of Harrell and George, I join it instead.

For my part, I opined in Harrell that the trial court need not even be required to find that the jury could find to a level of confidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the extraneous offense before admitting it. In my view it was sufficient that the record supplied “clear proof” the defendant committed it, without reference to any particular level of confidence. See 884 S.W.2d at 165-66. In the punishment context, of course, the statute itself requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt Article 37.07, § 3(a), V.A.C.C.P. For this reason I have no grave objection to a requirement that the trial court find that the jury must be able to find to that level of confidence that the defendant committed the extraneous offense before admitting it. And I certainly do not object to the conclusion that the jury must ultimately resolve the issue, upon proper instructions. See George, supra at 77-78 (Clinton, J., concurring).