Court Opinion

ID: 9665553
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:51:22.269259+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:16.697942
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
In his first point of error appellant alleges the trial court erred to sustain the State’s objection to “impeachment on collateral matters.” On appeal appellant claims the trial court should have allowed him to admit the letter and accompanying report in an attempt to show that some of Dr. Grigson’s prior predictions as to the likelihood that a capital defendant would constitute a future danger had proven erroneous. But at trial it is apparent appellant had a somewhat different purpose in mind. Because under the peculiar circumstances here it was within the trial court’s discretion to exclude the letter and report as an attempt to impeach on a collateral matter, I concur in the result.
Before Grigson testified in front of the jury, the trial court allowed appellant to question him on voir dire. It was the trial court’s express understanding that the object of this voir dire was to examine the basis of Grigson’s expert opinion, pursuant to Tex. R.Cr.Evid., Rule 705(b) & (c). Appellant began by eliciting an admission from Grigson that he had previously testified in another capital murder trial in Lubbock County, in February of 1990. During that trial, on cross-examination, Grigson had testified that the only study he was aware of that had ever examined the accuracy of his predictions of future dangerousness was one that had been conducted by James Zimmerman, a district court judge in Dallas County. This study was limited to the accuracy of such predictions made in Zimmerman’s own court. Appellant proffered the letter and report, addressed to Grigson and dated July 29, 1988, in a clear attempt to show that Grigson was aware as early as 1988 that another study of the accuracy of his predictions had been done, and that therefore his testimony in February of 1990 that he was not at that time aware of any other study had been a conscious distortion or lie. At the conclusion of the voir dire, appellant informed the trial court he had no intention of challenging Grig-son’s expertise, or the basis of his opinion, under Rule 705(c). He indicated that instead he intended to impeach Grigson in the manner developed during the voir dire.
But the particular way he proposed to impeach Grigson during voir dire fits the classic definition of impeachment on a collateral matter. See Goode, Wellborn & Sharlot, 33 Texas Practice: Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence: Civil and Criminal § 607.3, at 557-562 (2d ed. 1993). Had appellant clearly asserted at trial that he intended to use the letter and report to launch a general attack upon Grigson’s ability to make accurate predictions about future dangerousness, as he now claims on appeal, we might well appropriately hold he should have been allowed to do so — assuming, of course, that the State did not subsequently make a hearsay objection. See Id., § 607.4, at 562-65. However, it is not at all clear that this was his intention, and we cannot hold that the trial court erred to sustain the State’s objection that the particular use to which appellant apparently intended to put the letter and report — to show Grigson lied on a prior occasion— amounted to impeachment on a collateral matter. It was within the trial court’s discretion to exclude this evidence under Tex. R.Cr.Evid., Rule 403, as being, inter alia, too confusing or time consuming to justify admission. Goode, et at, supra, at 560-61.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment of the Court.