Court Opinion

ID: 9775827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:10:18.362715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:31.257613
License: Public Domain

*742BENAVIDES, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the Court’s judgment for reasons different than those expressed in the majority opinion. Particularly, I take exception to the Court’s analysis in two main respects. First, I do not believe that the present case calls for a reexamination of the rule recently confirmed in Tolbert v. State, 743 S.W.2d 631 (Tex.Crim.App.1988), and I would thus dispose of the case in conformity with that rule rather than overrule it. Second, I am generally opposed to this Court’s assessing the harmfulness of an error for the first time on discretionary review, and accede to the task in this case only because it seems to me that harm is conclusively established on the record.
I.
The rule elaborated by this Court in Tol-bert and followed thereafter in cases such as Deason v. State, 786 S.W.2d 711 (Tex.Crim.App.1990), is not really a special version of the harmless error rule and should not be abandoned upon the ground that rule 81(b)(2) of our Rules of Appellate Procedure supplanted it. All harmless error rules have in common the underlying belief that criminal convictions ought not to be reversed for errors which affect only the fairness of procedures, events, or rulings in trials, but do not contribute to their outcomes. In each case, it is the task of a reviewing court to determine whether an acknowledged error actually influenced deliberations of the factfinder. The rule of Tolbert simply assumes that there are no such influences in bench trials. Thus, its underlying rationale is not that verdicts should be protected from trial errors that make no difference, but rather that judges should be permitted without consequence to overrule even well-founded objections to evidence in trials without a jury.
I suspect that Tolbert is wrongheaded, not so much because it superficially resembles a harmless error rule different than the one now prescribed by our Rules, but because it indulges what may turn out to be an unwarranted presumption about the actual intentions of trial judges. Tolbert assumes that judges cure their own errors in the admission of evidence by privately and spontaneously instructing themselves to disregard such evidence before reaching a decision in the case. But a ruling that deliberately receives evidence over objection may actually indicate an opposite intention on the part of the judge.
Nevertheless, the presumption that trial judges disregard inadmissible evidence received over objection has been the law for a good many years, and its recent reaffirmation in Tolbert and Deason makes it a poor candidate for reexamination under any sound application of stare decisis. The credibility of this Court depends in no small measure upon its willingness to approach the business of ultimate review with sensitivity to the actual problems of criminal litigation. Trial judges and lawyers alike have a right to know the rules before they begin trial. Thus, to the fullest extent consistent with judicial restraint and discretion, it is the obligation of this Court to make the law consistent, coherent, and enduring. One of the most powerful devices for accomplishing this end in the common law tradition has always been the doctrine now known as stare decisis. Unlike civil law countries, English-speaking jurisdictions officially accept that decisions of the judiciary are binding in future cases. Among other things, this principle of precedent helps assure that the law will not be implemented or applied capriciously, that it will be largely even-handed and comprehensible.
Consequently, I take exception to overruling Tolbert in the present context because disposition of this case does not depend upon the continued vitality of that holding, and because it does not seem to me that the holding has been supplanted by rule 81(b)(2). Nevertheless, I agree that the trial judge should not be presumed to have disregarded the objectionable evidence in this case because the record clearly reflects that she considered it in fact. In short, the presumption is unequivocally rebutted. This, I think, is altogether consistent with the rule of Tolbert. I would, therefore, wait to reexamine Tolbert, if at *743all, until the rule is necessarily implicated, and the issue is properly joined and briefed.
II.
When we have found error in the decision of a lower appellate court, it is my belief that the case should then be remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with our opinion, at least whenever any further factual or legal analysis must he performed before final disposition of the case and such analysis has not already been acceptably performed by the court of appeals or by this Court on discretionary review. Clearly, that includes evaluating the harmfulness under Rule 81(b)(2) of trial errors. Here, on the other hand, this Court addresses the question of harm sua sponte, and finds the error not to be harmless.
A.
Sometimes the discharge of our responsibility on discretionary review will necessarily mean the reversal or affirmance of a conviction in the trial court. But that is rarely so in cases where we review a court of appeals only for legal mistakes in its assessment of trial error. Whether we ultimately reverse or affirm its decision in this respect, it is usually our duty to remand for a harm analysis rather than to perform that analysis ourselves.
The issue is far more serious than one of judicial economy. The law sometimes requires awkward or undesirable procedures which may not, for that reason alone, be ignored by those agencies charged with enforcing or applying them. In some quarters, for example, the existence of two high courts in Texas is thought uneconomical, a circumstance which it has been suggested should result in the abolition of this Court. Yet surely such objection would not excuse exercise by the Texas Supreme Court of criminal jurisdiction while the Court of Criminal Appeals still exists.
Similarly, the Constitution of Texas provides that “the Court of Criminal Appeals may, on its own motion, review a decision of a Court of Appeals in a criminal case as provided by law.” Tex. Const, art. 5, § 5. The applicable law provides that we may review such a decision “with or without a petition for discretionary review being filed by one of the parties[.]” Art. 4.04, § 2, V.A.C.C.P. This is the whole of our discretionary review jurisdiction, and it limits our authority to the review of “decision[s]” made in the lower courts.
Little has been done to elaborate the meaning of this puzzling word, even though it is plainly at the heart of our constitutional jurisdiction. Certainly, it is rationally susceptible of at least two readings. For example, one might take “decision” to mean “disposition.” In that sense, our authority would extend to the review of all affirmances and reversals of criminal convictions, and would reach any rationale for doing so, even if not discussed by the lower appellate court. On the other hand, “decision” might instead be taken to mean merely the conclusion or group of conclusions reached by the lower court in resolving one or more points of error. In such case, our power of review would be limited to those questions of law actually passed upon by the court of appeals.
I am not prepared to express an opinion in the present context whether this Court is utterly without jurisdiction in noncapital cases to pass upon the harmlessness of errors before a court of appeals has done so. Suffice it to say for the present that I would not regard such a claim as frivolous. But I must insist that a due regard for the authority of our intermediate appellate courts at least militates strongly in favor of restraint in such matters. Deciding the question of harm in most cases where the Court of Appeals has not yet done so produces a result which is at least potentially different than the result which would have been produced had the Court of Appeals instead resolved the question itself.
After an entire decade of multi-tiered appellate review in criminal cases, it is nothing short of astonishing that the court of last resort in such matters can still not come to grips with its own place in the “new” system. During the past ten years, we have remanded to the Court of Appeals for a harm analysis in nearly ten per cent *744of all cases on discretionary review decided by published opinion. Of course, there have also been a number of cases, far fewer to be sure, in which the harm analysis, as here, was done for the first time in this Court. What is so embarrassing is not that we have sometimes handled cases differently, but that we have done so capriciously. The long and the short of it is that similarly situated litigants are being treated inconsistently by this Court without any principled basis or rational explanation. Surely it is not too much to expect that a tribunal with the stature of this one develop some protocol for the conduct of its business, if for no other reason to avoid looking foolish or arbitrary.
There is no cogent reason under the existing system to expect that an ultimate decision about the viability of any given criminal conviction will be made by this Court on discretionary review, since there is nothing in the law to suggest that we have any such authority. Rather, it is the various courts of appeals that are charged with providing the appellate review to which the laws of this State entitle persons who have been convicted of crimes. Our job is to scrutinize those decisions sparingly for deficiencies of analysis in order to see whether the criminal jurisprudence of Texas is working as it should. And the criteria for success of the system is not whether we would have done the same as an appellate court any more than it is whether we would have done the same as a jury. When the person or tribunal who is charged under the law with performing a task has performed it as the law prescribes, it is our duty to leave it undisturbed, even if we would not have performed it the same way. And for like reason, it is our duty to forbear from preemptively executing the task assigned to another by law. It is just not possible to review a matter which has not yet been viewed in the first place.
B.
In the instant cause, a majority of this Court fails to notice that the analysis for harm it performs should ordinarily be done in the first instance by the Court of Appeals. Accordingly, I object to the implication of its opinion that a decision about the harmfulness of error may be made routinely by this Court for the first time on discretionary review. Nevertheless, because it seems to me that harm is conclusively established on the record by the trial judge’s admission that objectionable evidence was used to convict Appellant, I am willing to concede that a finding of harm necessarily follows in this case from a finding of error. Under the circumstances presented, there is no potential that the result reached in the Court of Appeals, were it to review the matter, could possibly be different than the result reached by the majority here. For this reason I concur in the judgment of the Court.
McCORMICK, P.J., and CAMPBELL and WHITE, JJ., join.