Court Opinion

ID: 9682421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:11:06.076667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:39.252791
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
concurring.
Appellant asserts in one ground of error that “the charge [to the jury was] fundamentally defective because it does not include instructions stated in the converse which would allow the jury to find appellant not guilty after considering each of the charged offenses.” The majority correctly concludes that the charge was not fundamentally defective. I only concur because there was no error in the charge, much less fundamental error. Thus, how the majority can invoke and apply Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157, 171 (Tex.Cr.App.1984), escapes me.
Based upon this Court’s past decisions, it would not have been error to overrule the requested charge that appellant now sub*518mits on direct appeal. See, for example, Wilson v. State, 140 Tex.Cr.R. 424, 145 S.W.2d 890, 892 (1940).
In this instance, after each named offense, the jury was instructed as follows: “Unless you so find, or if you have a reasonable doubt thereof, you should consider whether or not the defendant is guilty of the lesser included offense of [offense named].” In descending order, this was a direct instruction to the jury that if they had a reasonable doubt as to whether the appellant was guilty of the named offense, it should acquit him of that offense and next consider whether he was guilty of the next lesser included offense.
In Wilson v. State, supra, this Court held: “The court was not required to wind up every paragraph of the charge with the instruction that unless they so found or if they had a reasonable doubt thereof to acquit him.”
In this instance, the charge to the jury sufficiently instructed the jury upon the law of reasonable doubt, and it is presumed that the jury followed the court’s instructions to the letter — indeed, they must have because they found appellant guilty of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter, rather than the greater offense of murder. E.g., Cobarrubio v. State, 675 S.W.2d 749, 752 (Tex.Cr.App.1983).
I concur.