Court Opinion

ID: 9680508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:32:43.72119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:28.932441
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
concurring.
The majority correctly states that under the law as it presently exists in this State, and because appellant admitted his guilt at the punishment stage of the trial, he waived the objection he had made at the guilt stage of the trial concerning the admissibility of the prior conviction for impeachment purposes.
It is now axiomatic in the law of this State that a defendant who testifies at the punishment stage of the trial, and during his testimony, either on direct or cross-examination, admits his guilt to the offense for which he had earlier pleaded not guilty, has, for all legal purposes, entered a plea of guilty without receiving any of the admonishments which usually go with such a plea. He suffers the consequences that a plea of guilty has, as to the preservation of any error that may have occurred during the guilt stage of the trial. The majority correctly refers to Brown v. State, 617 S.W.2d 234, 236 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), as authority for overruling the appellant’s ground of error.
Let there be no mistake about the matter. The above rule of law is indeed a harsh one, and will usually prevent most defendants, in any kind of bifurcated criminal trial, from testifying at the punishment stage of trial, because they will fear that by testifying it may cause waiver of any error *794which may have occurred during the guilt stage of the trial.
I personally would join four other judges of this Court and vote to abolish the rule of law that this Court has created, and overrule the cases cited in the above part of Brown. However, just recently in Smyth v. State, 634 S.W.2d 721 (Tex.Cr.App.1982), where I set out in my dissenting opinion many, if not all, of the cases applying the doctrine of curative admissibility and waiver of error to the defendant’s claim of error because he had testified at the punishment stage of the trial and admitted his guilt, that same plea was made and rejected.
I, therefore, write this concurring opinion only to put defendants and their counsel on notice of what they may expect if the defendant decides to testify at the punishment stage of the trial, and during his testimony makes the equivalent of a plea of guilty to the offense for which he is on trial.