Court Opinion

ID: 9777169
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:01:06.172954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:49.716087
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
concurring.
Because I continue to subscribe to what I stated in the concurring and dissenting opinion that I filed in Lawrence v. State, 700 S.W.2d 157 (Tex.Cr.App.1985), I am unable to agree with the reasoning that the majority opinion uses to hold that there was only mere State error in the court’s jury charge, but do concur in the result that it reaches, that Jose Luis Castillo-Fuentes, hereinafter referred to as the appellant, is entitled to a new trial. I agree with the result because the error of omission in the court’s charge was error of Federal Constitutional dimension, and not mere State error, as the majority implicitly holds.
In Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975), also see Connecticut v. Johnson, 460 U.S. 73, 103 S.Ct. 969, 74 L.Ed.2d 823 (1983), the Supreme Court held that “the Due Process Clause requires the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of the heat of passion on sudden provocation when the issue is properly presented in a homicide case.” Thus, when the issue of sudden passion is raised in a murder case, the jury must be instructed thereon, even absent a request therefor or an objection thereto. See the concurring opinion that Justice Rehnquist filed in Mullaney v. Wilbur, supra, in which he pointed out that no objection was made to the charge that was given in that cause.
In Cobarrubio v. State, 675 S.W.2d 749 (Tex.Cr.App.1984), and Jenkins v. State, (Tex.Cr.App., No. 64,000, February 16, 1983, still pending on State’s motion for rehearing), a majority of this Court, either expressly or implicitly, subscribed in whole, and not just part, to what the Supreme Court had stated and held in Mullaney v. Wilbur, supra, which is contrary to what the majority opinion does in this cause.
The record reflects that the trial court first gave the jury abstract instructions on the offense of murder, see V.T.C.A., Penal Code, Section 19.02, but when it came to *564the application paragraph of the charge on the offense of murder it did not properly place therein an instruction either that the State had to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt sudden passion on the part of the appellant or had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the lack of sudden passion on the part of the appellant before it could find him guilty of the offense of murder. Under Mullaney v. Wilbur, supra, Cobarrubio v. State, and Jenkins v. State, this omission was clearly reversible error, notwithstanding the fact that the trial court also instructed the jury on the law of voluntary manslaughter, as well as applying the law of voluntary manslaughter to the facts of the case. I assume this occurred because, as a matter of State law, see Y.T.C.A., Penal Code, Section 19.04, the offense of voluntary manslaughter has been designated a separate and distinct offense from the offense of murder.
On direct appeal, the appellant relied totally upon Cobarrubio v. State, supra, and Jenkins v. State, supra, as authority in support of his sole ground of error, to-wit: “The court erred in its charge to the jury concerning the offenses of murder and voluntary manslaughter.” The State conceded in its response brief that under Cobarrubio v. State, supra, and Jenkins, supra, reversal was required. The court of appeals agreed and in an unpublished opinion ordered that the appellant’s conviction be reversed. Castillo-Fuentes v. State, (No. 04-82-00547-Cr, May 25, 1983). Thereafter, this Court granted the State’s petition for discretionary review.
The majority opinion in this cause, rather than relying totally upon this Court’s majority opinions of Cobarrubio v. State, supra, and Jenkins v. State, supra, relies instead on this Court’s majority opinions of Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157 (Tex.Cr.App.1985), and Lawrence v. State, 700 S.W.2d 208 (Tex.Cr.App.1985), also see Bradley v. State, 688 S.W.2d 847 (Tex.Cr.App.1985), and Moore v. State, 694 S.W.2d 528 (Tex.Cr.App.1985), which opinions are aberrational in the sense of what this Court had stated and held in the last ten years before this Court decided those cases.
Interestingly, in its partial reliance upon Cobarrubio v. State, supra, the majority opinion overlooks the fact that in Lawrence v. State, supra, a majority of this Court expressly overuled Cobarrubio v. State, supra, “to the extent that Cobarrubio v. State, supra, held that the jury charge ‘error precipitated a denial of due process of law in the most fundamental sense.’ ” This ruling cut the guts out of Cobarrubio v. State, supra. See the dissenting opinion that Judge Clinton, who not only authored that opinion for the Court but also authored Almanza v. State, supra, for the Court, filed in Lawrence v. State, supra.
The major flaw in the majority’s opinion rests in its attempt to find “actual harm”, as it is required to do under this Court’s majority opinion of Almanza v. State, supra, which decision created the rules that presently govern when a charge is erroneous as a matter of State law. However, the issue in this cause does not concern mere State law, but instead concerns error that rises to the level of Federal Constitutional dimension, which law in this instance controls. See Article VI, Federal Constitution.
In the majority opinion’s efforts to find “actual harm” to the appellant, it confuses apples and oranges, because you cannot have “Cobarrubio type fundamental error” and still hold that such error is harmless error. The two are simply incompatible. “Cobarrubio type fundamental error” precludes any harmless error analysis, because such error is per se reversible error. The majority opinion errs not only in its reasoning, but in its analysis of the issue as well, but this, too, is partly understandable in light of this Court’s majority opinion of Almanza v. State, supra, but Almanza is applicable only when one is considering error in the court’s charge pursuant to State law, and not Federal law. I say to the majority of this Court: When it comes to Federal Constitutional law, you cannot have it both ways; either Almanza must go or what is left of Cobarrubio must go because the two are absolutely and totally *565incompatible when it comes to fundamental error that rises to the level of Federal Constitutional dimension, as the error in this cause does — because of the fact that there was evidence in this cause that the killing occurred in the heat of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause.
In its efforts to find “actual harm” to the appellant, see Almanza v. State, supra, the majority opinion, using a “strawman” approach, seizes upon a question that the jury sent the trial judge and the trial judge’s response thereto and, after acting much like a graphologist might act, interprets the meaning of the question and the answer, and then concludes that under Almanza v. State, supra, actual harm has been shown. Therein lies one of the dangers of the majority opinion, which, when it comes to reasoning and analysis, is an aberration in the history of the criminal jurisprudence of this State, but nevertheless understood if one is a believer that an opinion should be “result oriented.”
The majority opinion, inferentially at least, holds that there would have been no harm to the appellant if the jury had been told in the answer the trial judge gave, that in considering whether the appellant was guilty of murder or voluntary manslaughter, or no offense at all, it was permitted to consider the offenses together. However, such an inference would be intolerable under Cobarrubio v. State, supra, because there would still be an omission in the charge concerning the mandatory burden of proof that the State must sustain when the issue of sudden passion is raised by the evidence in a murder case.
Another major problem with the majority opinion is the fact that, at least implicitly, it refuses to accept the fact that voluntary manslaughter is not a lesser included offense of the offense of murder, refuses to accept the fact that it is not a defense to the offense of murder, and refuses to accept the fact that it is not in the nature of a defense to the offense of murder, which offense, by Legislative edict, is instead a separate and distinct offense from the offense of murder. See Daniel v. State, 668 S.W.2d 390, 395 (Tex.Cr.App.1984) (Teague, J., Concurring opinion). But see and Cf. Bradley v. State, 688 S.W.2d 847, 849 (Tex.Cr.App.1985); Braudrick v. State, 572 S.W.2d 709 (Tex.Cr.App.1978). By its very wording, it is a weird type of murder offense.
However, this Court in the past has refused to consider the offenses of murder and voluntary manslaughter as separate and distinct offenses, trying instead to make the proverbial square peg, the offense of voluntary manslaughter, fit into a round hole, the offense of murder; for example, by stating and holding that voluntary manslaughter is either a lesser included offense of murder, a defense to the offense of murder, or that it is not a lesser included offense of murder unless the evidence raises the issue of sudden passion. Cf. Braudrick v. State, 572 S.W.2d 709 (Tex.Cr.App.1978); Bradley v. State, supra.
And this is the reason why our Legislature needs to delete the offense of voluntary manslaughter from our law, and put it where it actually belongs — that it only constitutes mitigation to the offense of murder, as it previously existed under our former Penal Code.
Under our present law, even if the jury believes beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused person is guilty of the offense of murder, voluntary manslaughter is not necessarily eliminated from the case because if the murder occurred under the immediate influence of a sudden passion arising from an adequate cause that person is not guilty of the offense of murder but is only guilty of the offense of voluntary manslaughter, which is actually murder.
Furthermore, if a jury finds a person not guilty of the offense of murder, it has necessarily found him not guilty of voluntary manslaughter because murder has all of the elements of voluntary manslaughter, which by Legislative edict also constitutes the offense of murder.
However, if the issue of sudden passion is raised in a murder case, then under this Court’s decisions voluntary manslaughter *566may either be a defense or a lesser included offense to murder.
All of this sounds rather confusing, doesn’t it? But the above should explain why the Legislature of this State needs to put voluntary manslaughter where it belongs, as mitigation of punishment for the offense of murder when the killing is found to have been committed under the influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause.
Nevertheless, under Mullaney v. Wilbur, supra, and this Court’s decisions of Cobarrubio v. State, supra, and Jenkins v. State, supra, and because there is such an offense in our law as voluntary manslaughter, if the accused person is on trial for murder, and sudden passion is raised by the evidence, it is incumbent upon the trial court to place in the application paragraph of the charge that pertains to the offense of murder an instruction that before the jury can find the defendant guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt, the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in addition to whatever else it must prove to establish the offense of murder, that there was a lack of sudden passion on the part of the accused. Otherwise, “When the defensive issue of sudden passion is deleted from the paragraph on murder and placed only in the voluntary manslaughter paragraph as it is here, there exists a decided likelihood that a jury would affirmatively answer the murder paragraph, never having considered the defensive issue of sudden passion ...” Cobarrubio v. State, supra, at 752.
Under Mullaney v. Wilbur, supra, Cobarrubio v. State, supra, and Jenkins v. State, supra, when sudden passion is raised in a murder case, it is per se reversible error, as a matter of Federal Constitutional law, for the trial court to instruct the jury as occurred in this cause.
For all of the above reasons, I only concur in the result reached by the majority opinion — that the judgment of the court of appeals should be affirmed.