Court Opinion

ID: 9681280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:47:18.711111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:33.004965
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
MORRISON, Judge.
Appellant contends that we were in error in our original disposition of his contention concerning jury misconduct.
It has been the uniform holding of this court that, where a juror has a conversation with an unauthorized person out of the presence of the court, a presumption of injury is raised. 42 Texas Jurisprudence, Sec. 317, p. 399; Maxey v. State, 138 Tex. Cr. R. 27, 133 S. W. (2d) 785.
It has also been continuously held for many years that such is a rebuttable presumption, and it becomes the duty of the state *477to call all parties to the conversation to testify on the motion for new trial to rebut such presumption by showing that the case was not discussed and that nothing was said which would prejudice the accused. Texas Jurisprudence, supra; Holder v. State, 140 Tex. Cr. R. 55, 143 S. W. (2d) 613.
In the ease at bar, all parties to the conversation, including all the members of the jury, testified, and it is conclusively shown that the case on trial was not discussed nor alluded to in any way.
The first requirement has clearly been met. We move now to a consideration of whether it is shown that appellant’s case was not prejudiced by what was said.
A daughter of one of the jurors reported to him that she had been criminally assaulted; that she had been examined by a doctor ; and that he had concluded that she had sustained no serious injury.
Naturally, the juror involved was upset by such news, but it does not necessarily follow that his being upset was injurious to appellant’s case.
A fairly safe rule would be to say that, if the matter brought to the juror’s attention while serving on the jury bore such similarity to the case on trial that it would reasonably be expected to influence him against the accused, then the verdict of such a jury cannot be allowed to stand. An excellent illustration of what can occur that will cause injury to the accused is found in Means v. State, 100 Tex. Cr. R. 1, 271 S. W. 613. There, the case involved was that of a Negro charged with killing a white man. While the case was in progress, the sheriff and his deputy went out to arrest a colored man for bootlegging. The suspect resisted arrest, killed the deputy sheriff, wounded the sheriff and was killed himself. After the jury had retired to consider their verdict, the bodies of the deputy sheriff and the colored man were brought and spread on the courthouse lawn just outside the jury room. A large crowd assembled and, within the hearing of the jury, loudly condemned Negroes generally for killing white men. There, we concluded that the incident was necessarily hurtful in the case of the accused then on trial.
Since there was no similarity between the case on trial and the matter brought to the juror’s attention, we conclude that the *478trial judge was warranted in finding that they were not so influenced.
Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this cause originally, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.