Court Opinion

ID: 9779038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:34:15.689345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:19.866747
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
concurring.
The majority opinion, although it expresses views not wholly in accord with my own, represents a significant step in the right direction, and I concur in its ultimate conclusion. However, in an effort clearly to identify those points upon which I differ with the majority, the following observations are, I think, pertinent to the issue and *306will, no doubt, arise again in similar contexts.
Nothing could be more obvious to me than that appellant in this cause was entitled to a jury instruction expressly applying the law of complicity to the facts of the case, and authorizing the jury to convict upon such theory only given adequate evi-dentiary support for all of its elements. Nevertheless, in recent past opinions, this Court has articulated limitations upon the right of an accused to jury instructions of this kind. These opinions, particularly Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157 (Tex.Cr. App.1985), and Govan v. State, 682 S.W.2d 567 (Tex.Cr.App.1985), are disturbing, for they involve applications of the “harmless error rule” with which I do not agree. The instant cause, if strictly controlled by the language of Govan, would have to be affirmed. Instead, I am pleasantly surprised to see that it is reversed, since in doing so the Court has perceived and corrected at least one of Govan’s worst implications.
A jury charge on the law of complicity, or vicarious criminal liability, typically known by the misleading appellation “law of parties,” 1 is logically required whenever evidence at trial raises an issue that conduct alleged in the charging instrument was committed by a person other than the accused, but that the accused is criminally responsible for such conduct by operation of Penal Code, § 7.02. Only in cases where the charging instrument does not expressly allege any elements of complicity is there a serious potential problem with jury instructions of this kind.2 In such cases, the most common complaint encountered by this Court is a failure by the trial judge to apply the law of complicity to the facts of the case after first abstractly defining it in the jury charge. Whenever he does this, the jury is left without adequate guidance concerning those circumstances under which it should convict and those under which it should acquit. Accordingly, the judges of this Court generally agree that refusal of the instruction over timely and specific objection is error. The difficulty is in determining when the error is prejudicial or harmful enough to call for a reversal of the conviction.
I take the Court’s holding in the instant cause to be that, where (1) multiple distinct theories of guilt are submitted for jury consideration, and (2) each is supported by evidence constitutionally sufficient for conviction, and (3) the jury charge applies one legal theory, but not both, to the facts of the case, and (4) the omission is sufficiently objected to by the defendant, and (5) the theory upon which no application instruction was given is supported by stronger or more persuasive evidence than the theory upon which a complete application instruction was given, then the error of omission is harmful enough to call for reversal.
The fifth premise is evidently derived from a footnote in Black v. State, 723 S.W.2d 674, 675-676, n. 2 (Tex.Cr.App. 1986), which responded to my dissenting opinion in that case. While I agree that the addition of this premise improves the analysis somewhat, my own formulation of the rule would eliminate premise (2) altogether, making further refinement unnecessary. I would drop premise (2) because the submission of any theory not supported by constitutionally sufficient evidence for conviction amounts to a misrepresentation by the trial judge, which is likely to mislead the jury into thinking that there is more than a modicum of evidence in the record supporting the theory. Conversely, whenever there is sufficient evidence in the record to authorize submission of the issue, an affirmative finding upon it by the jury *307should be unreviewable by an appellate court. Consequently, if properly submitted, it cannot be assumed on appeal that the jury did not find it true. Sufficiency of the evidence is a useful appellate tool only for determining whether an issue should be submitted for jury consideration in the first place, not to assess the harmfulness of an erroneous multiple-issue jury charge.
Once evidentiary sufficiency is eliminated as a criterion for determining prejudice in this context, premise (5) becomes unnecessary to correct the anomolous situation resulting when the unapplied theory is the stronger of the two. Moreover, it exceeds the scope of proper appellate review to judge the relative evidentiary strengths of multiple theories, all of which are supported by constitutionally sufficient evidence. Once we become involved in an enterprise this delicate, the jury trial as a meaningful factfinding device is damaged immeasurably, and the system devised to effectuate it loses its internal consistency.
STATE’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING
State’s motion for rehearing on petition for discretionary review denied.
DISSENTING OPINION ON STATE’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE MOTION FOR REHEARING

. "A person is criminally responsible as a party to an offense if the offense is committed by his own conduct, by the conduct of another for which he is criminally responsible, or by both." Penal Code, § 7.01(a). Thus, all criminally responsible persons are "parties”, whether primarily or vicariously so. To reserve the epithet only for the latter evinces a subtle misunderstanding of modern Texas penal law.

. It appears to me that this Court's rule that a party to an offense may be charged with the offense without the indictment alleging the facts which make the defendant criminally responsible for the conduct of another may be the cause why problems exist in this area of the law. See e.g., Pitts v. State, 569 S.W.2d 898 (Tex.Cr.App.1978), and its progeny.