Court Opinion

ID: 9857314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:29:28.699526+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:26.975185
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
I write only briefly to respond separately to appellant’s second and fourth points of error.

I.

Appellant argues in his second point of error that the prosecutor did not effectively rehabilitate a venireman who had manifested some difficulty articulating a distinction between “intentional” and “deliberate.” As I understand him, he argues that the prosecutor’s hypothetieals, by which he attempted to demonstrate a difference between the two terms, were deficient because they did not relate specifically to intentionally causing a result versus deliberately causing a result. This is critical, argues appellant, because capital murder is a result of conduct offense. Instead, the prosecutor’s hypothetieals simply demonstrated an abstract distinction between the two terms, without attempting to plug that distinction into the statutory scheme.
I am not sure I understand the majority’s response to this contention, but I agree it has no merit. A venireman who recognizes a distinction between “intentional” and “deliberate” in the abstract is not likely to have trouble distinguishing between intentionally causing a result and deliberately causing that result. The prosecutor’s hypothetieals did not serve, as in Lane v. State, 743 S.W.2d 617 (Tex.Cr.App.1987) or Martinez v. State, 763 S.W.2d 413 (Tex.Cr.App.1988), positively to mislead the venireman to believe that intentionally engaging in conduct that causes death is sufficient to constitute capital murder, and “in thus diluting what is required of the State to prove an ‘intentional’ killing, ... [to] concomitantly endorse[] an artificially low threshold of proof to establish the killing was ‘committed deliberately....’” Martinez, supra, at 420, n. 4, quoting Morrow v. State, 753 S.W.2d 372, at 376 (Tex.Cr.App.1988). In my view the trial court was justh fled in finding venireman Payne was rehabilitated, and therefore did not err in failing to grant appellant’s challenge for cause.

II.

In his fourth point of error appellant complains that the trial court’s attempted compliance with the dictates of Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989). The majority disposes of this contention with the dubious observation that the instruction given by the trial court was “nearly identical” to one we approved in Fuller v. State, 829 S.W.2d 191, at 209 & n. 5 (Tex.Cr.App.1992). In my view, the instruction given in this cause is much more similar to one we found deficient in Rios v. State, 846 S.W.2d 310 (Tex.Cr.App.1992).
As with the instruction in Rios, the instruction here seems to be “a clumsy attempt *9at jury nulMeation[.]” Id., at 316. Also like the instruction in Rios, the one given here:
“does not clearly communicate ... that evidence that has no rational bearing whatsoever on special issues, or has only a tendency to militate in favor of affirmative answers, may nevertheless, if it has an independent mitigating impact, serve as the basis for answering one or more of the special issues ‘no,’ in spite of the jurors’ oaths to answer special issues honestly, and in accordance with what they believe the relevant evidence shows. * * * In short, it simply does not adequately inform the jury that it may assess a punishment less than death on account of [mitigating evidence], irrespective of what the evidence shows as to deliberateness and future dangerousness.”
Id., at 316 & 317 (emphasis in the original). The instruction in Fuller was at least minimally adequate to serve this function. The instruction here is not.
“Without more explanation, an instruction that baldly tells the jury it may consider evidence to be mitigating that seems altogether irrelevant to the special issues, or relevant only in an aggravating sense, is likely in context of our scheme to confound rather than inform.”
Rios, supra, at 317.
However, appellant is unable to identify any mitigating evidence that either cannot be accounted for in mitigating fashion within the confines of the special issues, see Johnson v. Texas, 509 U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 2658, 125 L.Ed.2d 290 (1993), or that this Court has seen fit to agree has mitigating significance apart from the special issues. Penry requires no instruction at all absent introduction of such evidence. That the trial court gave an insufficient Penry instruction is therefore not a basis to reverse appellant’s conviction.
Accordingly, I concur in the result.
MILLER and BAIRD, JJ., join Part II of this opinion.