Court Opinion

ID: 9641138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:23:52.427461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:35.350595
License: Public Domain

*622KOEHLER, Justice,
concurring.
I reluctantly concur with Justice Woodard’s opinion in which he would affirm the 346th District Court’s denial of habeas corpus relief. Although it is obvious from the record that almost from the time the participants announced “ready” until the conclusion of the Batson hearing, the trial judge of the 34th District Court where the case is pending, had shed his cloak of judicial impartiality and donned the role of an advocate, he appears to have come to the sense of realizing that because of his and the prosecutor’s conduct at a point in the trial where jeopardy normally would have attached, he had to find a way to obviate an almost certain appellate reversal and an unfavorable jeopardy ruling. He accomplished this by reconsidering, on his own motion, Appellant’s previously denied Motions for Mistrial.
In the interest of justice, the right of a defendant not to be retried for the same offense must be balanced against the right of the public to a fair and properly conducted trial. The trial of this case had not gone so far that the trial judge would be precluded from reconsidering his previous incorrect rulings.