Court Opinion

ID: 9767775
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:26:37.900491+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:32.867463
License: Public Domain

BENAVIDES, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment of the Court and join the bulk of its opinion, but I think a few things require elaboration. In the first place, as regards the Batson analysis, I agree that the trial judge is not obliged to search the record of jury selection for racially neutral explanations. Undoubtedly, it is the prosecutor’s obligation to tender such explanations at the time first called upon to do so in the trial court. It is no sufficient substitute to let her offer them at a later time, certainly not on appeal or discretionary review. And it follows that any subsequent scrutiny by an appellate court of the voir dire process must necessarily be for the limited purpose of determining whether the prosecutor’s tendered explanations can be refuted or corroborated, and not as a surrogate for the explanations themselves. See Young v. State, 826 S.W.2d 141 (Tex.Crim.App.1992). I do not dispute that the Court of Appeals erred to hold otherwise and that its judgment should be reversed on this 'basis. But I join this Court’s opinion only insofar as its holding is limited to that rationale.
I do not subscribe to those parts of the opinion which discuss the issue of procedural default in the trial court. On direct appeal, the State contended that Appellant had forfeited his right to complain of the prosecuting attorney’s failure to proffer a racially neutral explanation for striking veniremember Elenor Green. It seems that, after first identifying the black veniremembers against whom the State had exercised peremptory challenges, including Mr. Green, and finding reason to suspect racial bias in those challenges, the trial judge required the State to make known the actual reasons for its strikes. The prosecutor promptly did so with respect to four of the prospective jurors but omitted any explanation for its challenge to Mr. Green. The trial judge then inquired, “Is that it? Is that all of the them?”, to which Appellant’s attorney replied, “That’s all, Judge.”
*606It was the State’s position in the Court of Appeals that this remark by defense counsel effectively waived Appellant’s objection to the exclusion of veniremember Green. Although the lower court did not fully dispose of this contention, it did express “doubt that appellant’s counsel’s comment ... was meant as a statement that he was abandoning his challenge.” The Court of Appeals then proceeded to decide the issue erroneously on another basis, for which error we here reverse its judgment. Unfortunately, this Court also recites that, “P]ike the Court of Appeals, we reject the State’s contention that appellant somehow abandoned his claim at the end of the Bat-son hearing.” At 605 n. 4.
I am disturbed by the posture of this case because it seems perverse to me that we should fault the trial judge here for an omission which Appellant evidently ratified. It is reasonably clear from the record that failure of the prosecuting attorney to offer a racially neutral explanation for her peremptory challenge of Elenor Green was the result of a general confusion, shared by trial judge and counsel alike, and promoted by the mistaken belief of Appellant’s attorney that an explanation had actually been given by the prosecutor for each prospective black juror against whom she exercised a peremptory challenge. It is also clear to me that defense counsel’s statement “that’s all” referred to all of the jurors for whom an explanation was required and not to all of the explanations for the strikes, as that would be a matter only known to the prosecutor. Under these circumstances, I would be disinclined to fault the trial judge for ruling against Appellant unless it could fairly be said in context that the judge knew his ruling applied to Elenor Green as well as to other challenged venire-members. It is the responsibility of every objecting party to ensure that his wishes are clearly communicated to the trial judge, and he must therefore bear responsibility for any vagueness or ambiguity in his request for relief. Thus, the lower court’s observation, approved now by this Court, that Appellant’s counsel did not mean to abandon his objection to the exclusion of veniremember Green is the wrong basis upon which to decide whether he in fact abandoned it. It is not so much a question of what Appellant’s attorney meant as of how he was understood and of whether it was reasonable for the trial judge to understand him that way. See Zillender v. State, 557 S.W.2d 515, 517 (Tex.Crim.App.1977). Indeed, had this issue been brought to us on discretionary review, it would likely have been my preference to reverse the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remand for reconsideration of the State’s procedural default claim in light of a more orthodox forfeiture rule. But because the State did not complain in a cross petition for discretionary review about the lower court’s disposition of the procedural default issue, that issue is not before us in this case. Haughton v. State, 805 S.W.2d 405, 407 n. 1 (Tex.Crim.App.1990); Hass v. State, 790 S.W.2d 609, 610 n. 1 (Tex.Crim.App.1990); Wilson v. State, 772 S.W.2d 118, 120 n. 3 (Tex.Crim.App.1989). See also Keith v. State, 782 S.W.2d 861, 863 n. 4 (Tex.Crim.App.1989). Accordingly, this Court’s remarks about procedural default in the present opinion should be viewed by bench and bar as merely gratuitous and, therefore, unnecessary to a fair disposition of the issues actually presented. Certainly, I do not subscribe to them myself, and would be unwilling to join the Court’s opinion in this case except that I consider them to be obiter dicta.
McCORMICK, P.J. and WHITE, J., join.