Court Opinion

ID: 9776491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:37:56.286349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:39.248738
License: Public Domain

BIERY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The elements of aggravated assault, to which appellant pled no contest, are that a person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causes serious bodily injury to another. TEX.PENAL CODE ANN. §§ 22.-01(a)(1), 22.02(a)(1) (Vernon 1989). “Serious bodily injury” means “bodily injury that creates a substantial risk of death or that causes death, serious permanent disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.” TEX.PENAL CODE ANN. § 1.07(a)(34) (Vernon 1974). Thus, aggravated assault is not the mere slapping of one person by another. Rather, it is a crime in which such extreme violence is *718done to another human being that: death may result; the victim may be beaten within an inch of his or her life; livers, kidneys and spleens are ruptured; eyes are gouged out; bones are crushed; and extreme pain is inflicted.
“Turpitude” is defined in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary as being vile and having inherent baseness and depravity. To this definition and that of Muniz v. State, 575 S.W.2d 408, 411-12 (Tex.Civ.App.—Corpus Christi 1978, writ ref’d n.r.e.), I would add that moral turpitude be described as that conduct which is reprehensible and which engenders moral outrage on the part of the community.
There is a reason that the ministry, medicine and the law are three great and learned professions: their common purpose is to help other human beings in the spiritual, physical and secular aspects of their lives. How is the committing of extreme violence upon the body of another person consistent with the goal of the legal profession to help, not hurt?
Forty-four years ago, the world witnessed the end of a titanic struggle about the basic values of western civilization. Pitted against one another were those who believed deeply that even a single human life has value versus the forces of racial superiority who believed, and acted upon the belief, that “superior” human beings have the power to bludgeon, maim or kill other human beings, whether the quantity be six million or one.1 We must not forget those lessons. The members of the legal profession must, in their professional and private lives, stand for the value of human life, not the illegal and immoral power to destroy it.
Further, one of the reasons for our professional existence is the resolution of disputes in a civilized manner. To resolve a dispute by resorting to brutal force is inconsistent with that professional purpose.
It is asserted that the fact finder, in the disciplinary proceeding, should have the ability to examine any mitigating circumstances. If there were mitigating circumstances to the charge of aggravated assault, such as self-defense, they should be examined and taken into account in the criminal trial proceeding. A plea of no contest or guilty to aggravated assault implies that the defendant has no mitigating circumstances to raise.
If we would continue to lay claim to the title “great and learned profession,” and if we would lay claim to being the legitimate professional descendants of Madison, Lincoln, Holmes, Hand and Cardozo, then we must require of ourselves the strictest standards which are consistent with the helping purpose of the legal profession.
I would hold that aggravated assault by a lawyer upon another human being is, per se, a felony involving moral turpitude within the meaning of STATE BAR RULES art. X, § 26(B).

. A similar struggle is being resumed in China today.