Court Opinion

ID: 9661752
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:48:03.800748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:33.189433
License: Public Domain

*828CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
On the matter of ascertaining a venireman’s understanding of “deliberately” I would be content merely to note my dissent for reasons stated in my opinion dissenting in Esquivel v. State, 595 S.W.2d 516 (Tex.Cr.App. 1980) had not the Supreme Court of the United States once again revisited the Georgia capital murder statutes. As a caution I invite attention to the following synopsis of constitutional rationale as set forth in the plurality opinion of Godfrey v. Georgia, — U.S. —, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980):
“This means that if a State wishes to authorize capital punishment it has a constitutional responsibility to tailor and apply its law in a manner that avoids the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty. Part of a State’s responsibility in this regard is to define the crimes for which death may be the sentence in a way that obviates ‘standardless [sentencing] discretion.’ Gregg v. Georgia, supra, 428 U.S. [153] at 196, n. 47 [96 S.Ct. 2909 at 2936, n. 47, 49 L.Ed.2d 859]. See also Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242 [96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913]; Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262 [96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929], It must channel the sen-tencer’s discretion by ‘clear and objective standards’ that provide ‘specific and detailed guidance,’ and that ‘make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death.’ As was made clear in Gregg, a death penalty ‘system could have standards so vague that they would fail adequately to channel the sentencing decision patterns of juries with the result that a pattern of arbitrary and capricious sentencing like that found unconstitutional in Furman could occur’. 428 U.S., at 195, n. 46 [96 S.Ct. at 2935, n. 46].” [Footnotes omitted]
I dissent.
PHILLIPS, J., joins in this dissent.