Court Opinion

ID: 9692475
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:55:13.903409+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:13.126651
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting.
Because the majority does not examine the effects of the State’s primary witness’s admitted perjury, I must respectfully dissent.
It is undisputed that Ebert, not Appellant, obtained the brick used to assault the complainant. Ebert picked up the brick and put it on the floorboard of the car *80before leaving for the hospital where they planned to kidnap the complainant. This action shows Ebert’s intent to use- a weapon, his degree of complicity, and his independent planning. Ebert 'lied at trial about who picked up the brick and about his level of involvement in the offense. Indeed, his trial testimony suggested that he was merely present when the murder was committed.
Yet the majority dismisses Appellant’s complaint that the trial court abused its discretion by denying his motion for new trial with the observation that “On appeal, [Appellant] makes no effort to show that Ebert’s changed testimony about who picked up the brick in the trailer park would probably bring about a different result upon a new trial.”1 The majority relies on ease law that is, at best, confusing.
As the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recognized in Keeter, “Article 40.001 [2] ... provides: ‘A new trial shall be granted an accused where material evidence favorable to the accused has been discovered since trial.’”3 Shall, of course, is mandatory, not precatory.4 The Keeter court determined that the term “material” was ambiguous and turned to extratextual factors to interpret the legislature’s attempt to clarify the mandate that the trial court must grant a new trial when newly discovered evidence favorable to the accused was the basis of a motion for new trial.5 In interpreting. the term “material,” the Keeter court decided that the new statute was merely a clarification of the former appellate rule governing the same subject matter.6 Consequently, the Keeter court announced that it would interpret the new statute in conformity with prior caselaw and continue to adhere to the four-part test that the majority in the case before us now applies.7 According to the Keeter court, materiality in the context of newly discovered evidence includes the requirements that
(1) the newly discovered evidence was unknown or unavailable to the movant at the time of his trial;
(2) the movant’s failure to discover or obtain the evidence was not due to a lack of diligence;
(3) the new evidence is admissible and is not merely cumulative, corroborative, collateral, or impeaching; and,
(4) the new evidence is probably true and will probably bring about a different result on another trial.8
Given the clear wording of the statute, the disparate treatment by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals of materiality in other contexts, and this court’s burden of assessing harm, it is difficult for me to conclude that the Keeter materiality test requires■ the defendant to satisfy all four prongs of the Court’s test. To harmonize the Keeter line with conflicting case law and the plain wording of the statute, it would appear to me that the four-pronged test for determining materiality is to be *81treated as a guide to interpreting the statute, not as a replacement for the statute.
According to the majority opinion, it is Appellant’s burden to show that the newly discovered evidence is probably true and that its materiality will probably bring about a different result upon a new trial.9 Although couched in terms of demonstrating materiality on appeal, the substance of the issue in the case before us is whether Appellant can show that he was harmed by the jury’s reaching a verdict it would not have reached had not the State’s eyewitness proffered perjured testimony concerning his role, and Appellant’s role, in the commission of the murder. As a result, the majority, in following Keeter, would require Appellant to show that Ebert’s perjured testimony harmed him. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has repeatedly reminded the intermediate appellate courts that “neither the State nor appellant must demonstrate harm when an error has occurred. Rather, it is the appellate court’s duty to assess harm after a proper review of the record.”10
The materiality of the new evidence in this case is self-evident: How much more material could evidence of a murder be than the identity of the person who provided the murder weapon intending that it be used to commit the murder? Similarly, the harm is self-evident: Conviction based on perjured testimony is per se a denial of due process.11 Yet, the fourth prong of the test approved by the Keeter court and applied by the majority appears, in a literal sense, to require that the movant prove harm in the same way that a defendant bears the burden of proving an affirmative defense. The Schütz court stated,
We have explained that, in evaluating the harm that a defendant has suffered as a result of a trial court’s error, [w]e do not resolve the issue by asking whether the appellant met a burden of proof to persuade us that he suffered some actual harm. No party should have a burden to prove harm from an error, and there ordinarily is no way to prove “actual” harm. Burdens and requirements of proving actual facts are appropriate in the law of evidence, but they have little meaning for the harmless error decision.12
What burden does a movant for new trial under Article 40.001 have? Surely it cannot be greater than the burden imposed on an applicant seeking extraordinary relief. In Ex parte Richardson, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals clearly set out the burden of an applicant seeking postconviction habeas corpus relief based on a Brady violation:
Applicant must first show that the State failed to disclose evidence, regardless of the prosecution’s good or bad faith. He must then show that the withheld evidence is favorable to applicant. Finally, the applicant must show that the evidence is material, that is, there is a reasonable probability that had the evidence been disclosed, the outcome of the trial would have been different. As in any habeas proceeding, the applicant must prove the constitutional violation and his entitlement to habeas relief by a preponderance of the evidence.13
*82Like the case before us, Richardson also dealt with perjured testimony. The only difference between Richardson and the case now before this court is the timing of the complaints: Richardson’s complaint was brought in a post-conviction application for writ of habeas corpus, and Appellant’s complaint was brought in a motion for new trial. The Richardson court required only that Richardson provide a sufficient record to show he was entitled to relief, not that he argue the point so convincingly that he sway the appellate court. That is, Richardson had the burden of production, not persuasion. In Richardson, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals performed this analysis:
Lastly, applicant must show that the evidence is material, that is, there is a reasonable probability that had the evidence been disclosed, the outcome of the trial would have been different. Applicant’s habeas hearing spanned fifteen full days and included testimony from forty-five witnesses. Among his many factual findings regarding applicant’s claims, the habeas trial judge determined that “[tjhere [was] no question but that by the time of applicant’s trial Anita Hanson’s credibility was a major issue in the case.” The habeas trial judge heard extensive testimony regarding Anita Hanson’s credibility (or lack thereof), the State’s knowledge of her credibility problems, the circumstances of her year secreted away in protective custody, and whether Hanson had agreed to testify against applicant in return for the District Attorney’s explicit or implicit promise not to prosecute her for killing Napoleon Ellis.
Anita Hanson’s eyewitness testimony clearly was crucial to the State’s capital murder case against applicant. Her account placed applicant at the murder scene at the time of the killings and assigned primary responsibility for the murders to applicant, whom Hanson claimed was in charge and ordered Hanson to shoot Ellison. She was the only eyewitness who testified to the actual killings and applicant’s participation. The State’s other witnesses established only that (i) appellant possessed a motive to commit the murders and intended to act on that motive, and (ii) two witnesses had observed him firing a machine gun on some prior date. It was upon her testimony that the jury convicted applicant of capital murder and sentenced him to death. Applicant’s co-defendants, however, who were tried separately, were either acquitted or their indictments were dismissed as, over time, Anita Hanson’s credibility was fatally impeached by her ever-increasing number of self-admitted perju-rious statements. Her story unraveled entirely in subsequent trials. We find that applicant has demonstrated a reasonable probability that, had the Gold-ston diary been timely disclosed and the six law enforcement officers testified, Anita Hanson’s credibility would have not only been impeached, but severely undermined. Because her testimony was critical to the State’s case, we agree with the habeas judge who concluded: “I find as a matter of law that the evidence would, in all likelihood, create the probability sufficient to undermine the confidence in the outcome of the proceeding.”14
In Ex parte Adams,15 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals addressed specifically the question of perjured testimony and the materiality requirement:
*83In Giglio v. United States, the Supreme Court decided that evidence of a promise of leniency to a witness made by another prosecutor should have been disclosed to the defense even if the prosecutor trying the case acted in good faith and did not know of the offer because a “promise made by one attorney must be attributed to the Government.” Accordingly, the Court concluded that the government’s failure to disclose the impeachment evidence was a violation of due process. In addition, the Court articulated a standard for materiality, left unexplained in Brady, by stating that “if ‘the false testimony could ... in any reasonable likelihood have affected the judgment of the jury,’ ” then it was sufficiently material to require a new trial.
In United States v. Agurs, the Court established several different standards of materiality. First, in cases where the prosecution knew or should have known that perjured testimony was utilized to secure a conviction then materiality would be present and a new trial ordered “if there is any reasonable likelihood that the false testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury.” The Court believed that such a standard was appropriate because such cases “involve a corruption of the truth-seeking function of the trial process.”
Second, the Court observed that if the defense makes a specific pretrial request for exculpatory evidence and the prosecutor is thereby placed on notice his “failure to make any response is seldom, if ever, excusable.” Although the Court did not expressly identify a standard of materiality it is obvious that it intended to apply the “may have affected the trial outcome” standard.
Third, in those cases in which the defendant makes either no request or an overly general request, although the prosecutor will still have a duty to disclose favorable evidence, the standard of materiality will necessarily be higher than in the preceding situations. The Court stated:
If the omitted evidence creates a reasonable doubt that did not otherwise exist, constitutional error has been committed. This means that the omission must be evaluated in the context of the entire record. If there is no reasonable doubt whether or not the additional evidence is considered, there is no justification for a new trial.
In 1985 the Supreme Court again confronted the issue of the prosecutor’s failure to disclose to the defendant favorable evidence. In United States v. Bagley, a divided Court replaced the Brady-Agurs multiple materiality standards and adopted a single materiality standard. In doing so, the Court rejected the distinctions between specific requests for exculpatory evidence and no requests for such evidence. In Bagley the defendant was indicted for violating Federal narcotics and firearm statutes. Prior to trial the defendant filed a discovery motion requesting that the trial court order the government to disclose “ ‘any deals, promises or inducements made to witnesses in exchange for their testimony.’ ” The government’s response to the defendant’s discovery motion did not disclose any “ ‘deals, promises or inducements.’” Several years after the defendant was convicted, he discovered that the government’s only witnesses had executed contracts to provide to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms information concerning his activities, collect evidence against him and testify against him in court. The witnesses were to be paid an amount of money “upon the accomplishment of the objective.... ”
*84The Supreme Court noted initially that the rule of Brady v. Maryland was based on the requirement of due process, and its overriding purpose was to insure that a defendant receives a fair trial by requiring the prosecution to disclose favorable evidence. The Court further noted that unlike Brady and Agurs the case involved impeachment evidence but it too was subject to the Brady dictates and should not be distinguished from any other exculpatory evidence.
The Court thereafter reviewed its holding in Agurs and the standards of materiality it established. The Court also noted that since Agurs, the Court had decided Strickland v. Washington, which held:
[t]hat a new trial must be granted when evidence is not introduced because of the incompetence of counsel only if “there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” The Strickland Court defined a “reasonable probability” as “a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.”
The Court then dispensed with the Agurs standards of materiality that distinguished between “no request,” “general request,” and “specific request” cases and concluded that the standard identified in Strickland v. Washington would be “sufficiently flexible to cover all of the preceding situations.”
Significantly, however, the majority opinion did not disturb the standard of materiality announced in Agurs for cases involving the prosecution’s knowing utilization of perjurious testimony.
In Ex parte Turner, this Court adopted the Agurs test for materiality in both specific request and no request cases. Implicitly, the Court adopted the Agurs standard of materiality when perjured testimony is utilized.
In Hernandez v. State, we adopted the Strickland v. Washington standard to resolve claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. We are now equally persuaded by the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Bagley when it adopted the Strickland standard for materiality in cases involving exculpatory evidence. Since the Bagley Court did not disturb the standard of materiality established in Agurs when dealing with the prosecution’s knowing use of perjured testimony we hereby expressly adopt that standard also.
Comparing these standards to the trial court’s findings it is obvious that ha-beas corpus relief is necessary. The statement Miller gave to the police on December 3, 1976, which the trial court found the State intentionally failed to disclose, contains statements that are the diametric opposite of Miller’s trial testimony. During the writ hearing the applicant’s attorney introduced, without objection, an exhibit that details the abundant discrepancies between the two statements. Obviously, this is the type of' prior inconsistent statement that could have had the effect of substantially soiling Miller’s direct identification testimony. In Napue v. Illinois, the Supreme Court observed that the State’s principal identification witness had, contrary to his trial testimony, been offered something in exchange for his testimony. In finding that the prosecutor had a duty to correct the perjured testimony the Court commented, “The jury’s estimate of the truthfulness and reliability of a given witness may well be determinative of guilt or innocence.” Had Miller’s statement been provided to the defense, as the trial court had ordered, it *85would have obviously constituted a secure basis for impeachment and could have nullified the effect of her otherwise unimpeached identification of the applicant.16
The majority in the case now before this court does not analyze the importance of the newly discovered evidence that Ebert committed perjury in describing his role in the murder. Rather, the majority assigns to Appellant a burden of persuasion that does not clearly and unequivocally exist in the law that governs this issue. Instead of examining the record to determine the impact of Ebert’s perjury, the majority requires Appellant to convince us that he would have been acquitted if Ebert had testified truthfully.
The majority does not consider the effect that truthful testimony would have had on the jury charge or upon the sufficiency of the evidence. That is, the majority does not consider that the revealed perjury shows that Ebert is, like the other eyewitnesses, an accomplice. A person who is merely present at the scene of the offense is not an accomplice; an affirmative act or omission is required.17 A defendant is not entitled to a jury instruction on the accomplice witness rule if another person was merely present at the scene of the offense.18 When the evidence shows that a witness is a party to the offense for which a defendant is being tried, however, the defendant is entitled to a jury instruction that tells the jury that “[a] conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice unless corroborated by other evidence tending to connect the defendant with the offense committed; and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely shows the commission of the offense.”19 The corroboration cannot come from another accomplice who testifies in court.20
Ebert’s perjured testimony portrayed him as an innocent bystander, merely present at the murder scene. Appellant did not request an accomplice witness instruction as to Ebert, and, if Ebert was merely present, Appellant was not entitled to the jury instruction.21 I would point out that the evidence at trial showed that the other eyewitnesses to the murder were also participants. As Judge Womack observed in Herron, “[I]f there was no charge at all on the law of accomplice-witnesses, there is no chance that the jury could have applied the law correctly.”22
The majority does not discuss the impact of Ebert’s perjury on Appellant’s ability to convince the trial court that Ebert was an accomplice as a matter of law or to convince the jury that Ebert was an accomplice as a matter of fact. The majority does not discuss the effect of a jury instruction on accomplice testimony. Nor does the majority discuss the impact of independent impulse evidence.23 Of equal *86significance in determining whether Appellant should have been granted a new trial, the majority does not evaluate the condition of the remaining evidence when all accomplice testimony is excluded.24
Perjury undermines the very fabric of our justice system. Our rule of law depends on honesty: on honest judges, on honorable counsel, and on witnesses who are governed by the sanctity of the oath they swear or affirm. When any element of this rule of law fails its obligation of honesty, both the State and the defendant are denied a fair trial, and the public is denied a belief in the integrity of our justice system. Both the trial judge and the lawyers in this case behaved honorably; it is the witness Ebert who violated his oath. Because the majority fails to assess the impact that Ebert’s lies had on Appellant’s right to a fair trial, I am compelled to dissent.

. Majority op. at 71.

2. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 40.001 (Vernon Supp.2005).

. Keeter v. State, 74 S.W.3d 31, 36 (Tex.Crim.App.2002).

. See Tex. Gov’t Code Ann. § 311.016(2) (Vernon 2005); see also Albertson’s, Inc. v. Sinclair, 984 S.W.2d 958, 961 (Tex.1999) ("We generally construe the word ‘shall’ as mandatory, unless legislative intent suggests otherwise.”).

. Keeter, 74 S.W.3d at 36.

. Id. at 37.

. Id.

. Id. at 36-37.

. See majority op. at 71.

. Schutz v. State, 63 S.W.3d 442, 444 (Tex.Crim.App.2001) (citations omitted).

. Ex parte Castellano, 863 S.W.2d 476, 481 (Tex.Crim.App.1993).

. Schutz, 63 S.W.3d at 444 (citations omitted).

. Ex parte Richardson, 70 S.W.3d 865, 870 (Tex.Crim.App.2002) (citations omitted).

. Id. at 872-73 (citations omitted).

. 768 S.W.2d 281 (Tex.Crim.App.1989).

. Id. at 289-91 (citations and footnotes omitted).

. Blake v. State, 971 S.W.2d 451, 454 (Tex.Crim.App.1998).

. Russell v. State, 598 S.W.2d 238, 250 (Tex.Crim.App.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1003, 101 S.Ct. 544, 66 L.Ed.2d 300 (1980).

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.14 (Vernon 2005).

. See Herron v. State, 86 S.W.3d 621, 631-33 (Tex.Crim.App.2002).

. See Russell, 598 S.W.2d at 250.

. Herron, 86 S.W.3d at 635 (Womack, J. dissenting).

. See Solomon v. State, 49 S.W.3d 356, 368 (Tex.Crim.App.2001) (pointing out that there is no enumerated defense of "independent impulse” in the penal code but that independent impulse evidence would "simply negate the conspiracy liability element of the State’s case”).

. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. arts. 38.14, 38.17 (Vernon 2005).