Court Opinion

ID: 9646703
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:08:31.071201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:11.400175
License: Public Domain

HOWELL, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Justice must not stoop to conquer. The State violated the court’s discovery order; the violation was deliberate and wilful; the withholding cannot be dismissed as, beyond a reasonable doubt, harmless; reversal must ensue.
The note or letter in question was apparently written by appellant to his wife at a time when he was under investigation, fearful of imminent exposure, and on the verge of a suicide attempt that never came about. The admissions made therein deeply implicated him in the crime charged in the indictment. The majority is correct in stating that the suppressed item was not exculpatory in nature and that the grant or denial of a discovery order was therefore within the trial court’s discretion. However, the fact that discovery of non-exculpatory written evidence to be offered by the State was discretionary to the court is academic. The court granted a discovery order. The order having been granted and the trial having commenced with appellant and his counsel reasonably entitled to rely on the assumption that the order had been *522complied with and that all written evidence to be used by the State had been exhibited, the court lost all discretion (as that term relates to the application of the law to the facts of the particular case) to modify the order or admit evidence that violated the order.
This does not mean that a trial court may not seasonably modify its order. The State may, during trial, move for leave to amend a discovery order. The court may grant the amendment, but it would be an abuse of discretion to do so if a defensive theory already placed before the jury were to be refuted. The power of a trial court to modify a discovery order has no application to the case at hand because the State made no request to modify and because the State employed the instrument in question as rebuttal evidence. Unless it served to refute a defensive theory, it was not proper at all as rebuttal evidence. See, e.g., Laws v. State, 549 S.W.2d 738, 741 (Tex.Crim.App.1977).
Concerning discovery orders against the State, the majority is also correct in stating that the courts have also created a good-faith exception. When the State offers evidence that violates a discovery order, the court may find that the terms of the order were misunderstood or that something was overlooked or that the existence of certain evidence was not previously discovered or that the State did not anticipate the need for certain evidence until sometime during the trial. See, e.g. Honea v. State, 585 S.W.2d 681, 687 (Tex.Crim.App.1979). Just as the trial court is the fact finder on motions and other incidental matters, it is the fact finder on claims that the State has acted in good faith in response to discovery orders. Its fact findings on such incidental matters will not be disturbed on appeal if they are reasonably supported by the evidence. Cf. Dunn v. State, 721 S.W.2d 325, 336 (Tex.Crim.App.1986) {Jackson v. Den-no hearing). In this context, a declaration on appeal that the trial court has committed no abuse of discretion amounts to no more than a holding that the court’s fact finding, express or implied, is reasonably supported by the evidence. Any notion that a trial court may, on personal predilection or at whim, permit violation of discovery orders must be rejected. See Lindley v. State, 635 S.W.2d 541, 543 (Tex.Crim.App.1982) (“ [WJhere the trial court grants a motion for discovery and the prosecution fails to disclose that evidence ordered disclosed by the trial court, then that evidence should not be admitted, if it is offered into evidence by the State during the trial.”)
As the majority concedes, there was no room in this record for the trial court to find good faith, hence no room for the trial court to exercise its “discretion” in favor of permitting the State to place the offending exhibit in evidence contrary to the discover order. This was amply demonstrated by the State’s closing argument.
[Y]ou don’t tell them everything you’ve got up front. You kinda save a little bit and ... [that’s] just smart. That’s just good trial tactics. That’s just good prosecution. We didn’t make it up folks, but ... [you’re] dam right, we didn’t bring it to you up front because you want to see what they have got to say. And that just blows their defense out of the water.
In closing statement, the State of Texas further argued:
He’s manipulated everyone in this case. It is obvious he has manipulated his lawyers. They almost fell out their chair when they saw that note.
Previously, the State had taken an entirely different position when appellant’s objection to the exhibit was being argued outside the presence of the jury. Counsel for the State there contended that defense counsel “told me specifically ten days ago ... [that] he was only interested in items that we intend to offer in the case in chief.” Civil rule 11 is applicable to any such contentions; they must be disregarded. Tex.R.Civ.P. 11 (agreements between attorneys unenforceable unless evidenced in the record). The underlying premise is that trial of the merits should not be occluded by trial of disputes between counsel as to what was said and done. In addition, the law must be interpreted so as to suppress the obvious temptation to fabricate. If a defendant decides to waive rights un*523der a discovery order which is a part of the record and if the State desires to rely on such waiver, it must cause the waiver to be placed on record. Cf. Tex.R.Civ.P. 11, supra.
Searching for grounds to uphold the trial court, the majority has held that appellant should have anticipated that the exhibit would be offered on the theory that appellant knew that the box in which the item had been seized and searched by federal authorities. The holding is strained in view of the testimony of a federal agent that the exhibit, as he found it, had been torn in pieces and that he had reconstructed the pieces. Even further, if it be granted that the appellant had reason to suspect that some governmental agency had come into possession of the document, was the appellant not entitled to conclude that the instrument had been discarded or that the State had decided, for reasons unknown, not to offer it? In short, was appellant not entitled to rely on the court’s order? Even more pointedly, was he required to distrust the State of Texas when it represented by implication that it had complied with the order? Was he required to anticipate that the State might be engaging in artifice— stooping to conquer? Framed in this light, the answer is obvious.
Implicitly conceding the weakness of its grounds for holding that the trial court committed no error, the majority has held the error to be harmless. In doing so, it has seized upon a grounds that the State has not had the temerity to advance in its own brief. Instead, it has declared to this court that the exhibit was offered on rebuttal to refute “the defensive theory that the offense was actually committed by appellant’s friend and business associate....” The “no harm” declaration is particularly hard to accept in view of the fact that the exhibit was the only documentary evidence that the jury requested to see during its deliberations.
The majority has further mislaid the burden on the question of harm. The court duly heard the appellant’s motion and entered its order; the State failed to comply. It was the burden of the State, not the appellant to show why it failed to comply or to present any other matters in mitigation.
Of course, even though the majority has not taken express notice thereof, the proper test is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Tex.R.App.P. 81(b)(2) (error in trial court requires reversal on appeal, unless appellate court determines beyond a reasonable doubt that error made no contribution to the conviction or punishment). Clearly, the State has not demonstrated that its highly questionable tactics were, beyond a reasonable doubt, harmless. The mere fact that this ploy was resorted to testifies to the opposite. When counsel deliberately withheld the exhibit from discovery so that he would have ammunition to surprise his opposition on rebuttal, he was thinking in anything but the terms of harmlessness; harm to the theory of defense advanced by the opposition was the very objective of this intentional withholding.
This dissent ends whence it began. Justice must not stoop to conquer. The law west of the Pecos, frontier justice, if it ever existed, passed with the frontier. Our constitutional system of criminal justice contemplates a fundamentally fair trial, regardless of the heinousness of the offense. No matter how generous the discovery order may have been, it was the law as declared for the particular case. Appellant was entitled to rely on the law as it had been laid down by the trial court.
I dissent from the majority holding in this case. On account of the lawless act of the State itself, this defendant must be tried anew.