Court Opinion

ID: 9764262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:17:11.709355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:23.670725
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
It is distressing that the Court simply will not come to grips with the dichotomy created by provisions of V.T.C.A. Penal Code, §§ 19.02(a)(1) and 19.04. So, faced with a challenge to sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction for voluntary manslaughter, the majority is content to say that “the evidence, which shows the appellant shot and killed the deceased, is sufficient to support a conviction for the greater offense of murder,” and then to invoke a line of decisions purporting to hold, “Proof of a greater offense will sustain a conviction for a lesser included offense.” 1
However, none could take into account teachings of the Supreme Court of the United States in Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975), for it had yet to be decided. But if to satisfy due process requirements the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt an absence of heat of passion or sudden provocation when that issue is properly raised by the evidence in a homicide prosecution, then it seems to me that when a properly charged jury finds, in effect, the State failed in its burden of proof and the accused did cause death under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause, the evidence supports a conviction only for the offense of voluntary manslaughter.
We are informed by the Practice Commentary following V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 19.05, that “Section 19.04 is basically the 1856 definition of (voluntary) manslaughter” without an enumeration of various aspects of adequate cause. Then as now—
“[t]o constitute manslaughter two things are absolutely necessary: First, sudden passion; and, second, that that passion must arise from an adequate cause. If either of these requisites are wanting, an unlawful homicide cannot be manslaughter.”
Merka v. State, 82 Tex.Cr.R. 550, 199 S.W. 1123, 1125 (1918).
Earlier, writing for the Court in Davis v. State, 70 Tex.Cr.R. 37, 155 S.W. 546 (1913) Presiding Judge Davidson had characterized as “an uncontroverted proposition” that if the two requisites coexist, “the homicide is manslaughter,” but if they do not, “it may be murder in one of the degrees,” id., 155 S.W. at 548. To the same effect are, e.g., Redman v. State, 67 Tex.Cr.R. 374, 149 S.W. 670, 677 (1911) and cases cited therein, including a seminal opinion in McKinney v. State, 8 Tex.App. 626, 645 (Ct.App.1880). The point is, of course, that while some elements of the offense of voluntary manslaughter may coincide with elements of the offense of murder, there are *395unique requisites for voluntary manslaughter that distinguish it from murder.2
Accordingly, I do not join with the majority in rejecting appellant’s challenge, though I do concur in the judgment of the Court. I agree not only that the evidence justified submitting the issue of voluntary manslaughter to the jury, but also that the evidence is sufficient to support the verdict of the jury and the judgment of conviction for voluntary manslaughter.

. See Article 40.03(9), V.A.C.C.P., providing that a verdict is not contrary to law and evidence when an accused is found guilty of “an offense of inferior grade to, but of the same nature as. the offense proved.” Its predecessor article is the genesis of the old rule. See, e.g., High v. State, 54 Tex.Cr.R. 333, 112 S.W. 939, 940 (1908).

. "Manslaughter is an intentional killing, differentiated from murder only by the mental status of the accused, and the jury might in a proper case ... find the defendant guilty of manslaughter, even though they believed beyond a reasonable doubt that he had intentionally killed the deceased with a deadly weapon.” Pinson v. State, 94 Tex.Cr.R. 517, 251 S.W. 1092, 1093 (1923).