Court Opinion

ID: 9776021
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:16:41.520099+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:32.980951
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because of a significantly different perception of Section 19.-06, Texas Penal Code (Vernon 1974), which constitutes the basis of appellant’s second ground of error.
Section 19.06 provides as follows:
In all prosecutions for murder or voluntary manslaughter, the state or the defendant shall be permitted to offer testimony as to all relevant facts and circumstances surrounding the killing and the previous relationship existing between the accused and the deceased, together with all relevant facts and circumstances going to show the condition of the mind of the accused at the time of the offense.
As I read it, 19.06 directs the admissibility of all relevant facts and circumstances relating to the killing and to the defendant’s state of mind at the time, whether offered by the State or by the defendant. During the first phase of the trial, to determine the guilt of the defendant, the trial court prohibited the defendant from introducing testimony of the two arresting officers who arrived at the scene of the killing very soon after the fact. The testimony of the officers directly related to the defendant’s emotional condition at the time of the killing, and accordingly was explicitly authorized by 19.06.
In addition, the excluded statement was res gestae of the arrest. Khoury v. State, 669 S.W.2d 731, 734 (Tex.Crim.App.1984) held that it was reversible error to exclude the defendant’s res gestae statement to police upon his arrest in a murder case, which explained his state of mind at the killing, relying on Tex.Code Crim.P.Ann. art. 38.22, sec. 5; Harryman v. State, 522 S.W.2d 512 (Tex.Crim.App.1975); Ramos v. State, 419 S.W.2d 359 (Tex.Crim.App.1967).
*867Even more glaring was the error in excluding testimony of the psychiatrist who had treated survivors of Nazi concentration camps and their descendants. Psychiatric testimony concerning the defendant’s mental condition at the time of the killing, especially enlightened by the experience of Dr. Roden in treating other such patients who similarly were such descendants, .would appear to me to be of considerable potential significance to the jury, and also clearly authorized by 19.06. Indeed, the exclusion of very similar psychiatric testimony was held to be reversible error under 19.06 in McClure v. State, 575 S.W.2d 564 (Tex.Crim.App.1979).
By virtue of its specific terms applicable to prosecutions for murder and voluntary manslaughter, general theories of relevancy and competency are superceded by Section 19.06. Self-defense, the most common justification asserted in such prosecutions, is always evaluated from the particular defendant’s perception at the time, not from the theoretical “reasonable and prudent man” acting with olympian objectivity. Kolliner v. State, 516 S.W.2d 671 (Tex.Crim.App.1974); Jones v. State, 544 S.W.2d 139 (Tex.Crim.App.1976). Jones declared (quite consistently with prior decisions) that under the law of self-defense, a person has a right to defend from apparent danger to the same extent as he would had the danger been real, provided he acted upon a reasonable apprehension of danger as it appeared to him from his standpoint at the time. Kolliner v. State, supra.
Whether the trial court believed the proffered psychiatric testimony was strong, feeble, unimpeached, contradicted, sophistry, a desecration, or simply not entitled to belief, the jury under 19.06 was clearly entitled to consider it. Kolliner, supra; Jones, supra. The very purpose of 19.06’s sweeping language was to distinguish the particular “mind of the accused at the time of the offense” from the mind of the theoretical “reasonable and prudent man,” and permit the jury, as the trier of fact — not the court — to evaluate the killing in such light.
I would reverse and remand for a new trial.