Court Opinion

ID: 9644760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:04:23.427872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:18.034089
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Judge,
concurring.
The issue in this case is whether the operation of Art. 37.071(f), V.A.C.C.P.1, which applies only to V.T.C.A. Penal Code § 19.03(a)(6)2, unconstitutionally precluded the jury from considering mitigating evidence surrounding the circumstances of this capital offense. In this case, the proffered mitigating evidence was provocation by one of the deceased victims, the point of the third special issue under Art. 37.-071(b)3; however, this evidence was provocation from the deceased victim named second in the indictment and, therefore, under Art. 37.071(f), the third punishment issue was not submitted as to that victim. I concur with Judge Baird that, as applied to this appellant, Art. 37.071 was unconstitutional. At the risk of being redundant, I briefly summarize the facts of this offense, which are decisive of this “as applied” analysis.
Appellant was convicted of murdering two people, Davis and Holley, who had attacked appellant and his companion in a bar parking lot. Davis, beat appellant’s head against a concrete sidewalk and the bumper of a car numerous times, while Holley held a knife on appellant’s companion and threatened to “cut his goddamned guts out” if he attempted to help appellant. Appellant managed to get free from Davis and grabbed a gun from his friend’s car. Appellant fired at a passing vehicle, which he hit. He then fatally shot Davis while Davis sat in the passenger seat of Holley’s car. Appellant fatally shot Holley as she attempted to flee from the driver’s side of her car where she was standing.
In its indictment, the State alleged Holley as the first victim, then Davis. At the punishment phase of trial, appellant requested a jury charge with the third special issue submitted as to both victims, rather than just Holley. The trial judge reluctantly denied appellant’s requested charge and submitted the third issue only as to Holley, as required by Art. 37.071(f).
The body of law with which we are concerned in addressing appellant’s claim was generated after the United States Supreme Court declared our statute unconstitutional in Branch v. Texas, decided with Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972). In response, the Texas statute was amended, and subsequently declared constitutional in Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976). The Court found the Texas legislature had narrowed the categories of murder for which the death penalty could be imposed in enacting V.T.C.A. Penal Code § 19.03(a)(1)—(5), but the constitutionality of our scheme turned on whether the special issues in Art. 37.071(b) allowed consideration of particularized mitigating factors. Jurek, 428 U.S. at 272, 96 S.Ct. at 2956. The Court held that same day that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments required that a capital sentencing scheme allow the sentencing authority to consider mitigating circumstances. See Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), and Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242, 96 S.Ct. 2960, 49 L.Ed.2d 913 (1976). The net effect was that the Eighth *844and Fourteenth Amendments required that an individualized sentencing determination be made. Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976).
The High Court further noted that Texas law first required that one of five aggravating circumstances be found before a defendant could be found guilty of capital murder. See Penal Code § 19.03(a)(l)-(5). Then, before imposing the death sentence, the jury was asked to consider whatever mitigating evidence the defendant brought before it. Thus, the Texas capital sentencing scheme “guide[d] and focuse[d] the jury’s objective consideration of the particularized circumstances of the individual offense and the individual offender before it [could] impose a sentence of death.” Ju-rek, 428 U.S. at 273, 96 S.Ct. at 2957.
The Supreme Court continued to build upon the individualized sentencing foundation of Jurek, Gregg, Proffitt, and Woodson with its decisions in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982). In Lockett, the Court struck down Ohio’s death penalty statute because it did not permit the sentencing judge to consider as mitigating factors the defendant’s lack of a specific intent to kill and her limited role in the murder as an accomplice. The Court concluded the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer not be precluded from considering as a mitigating factor any aspect of a defendant’s character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death. Lockett, 438 U.S. at 604, 98 S.Ct. at 2965 (emphasis added). Eddings followed the Lockett principles in vacating a death sentence for a 16 year old defendant because his sentencer was not able to consider (because the state statute did not consider it a “mitigating” factor), as mitigating factors, evidence of his difficult family history and of emotional disturbance.
The overriding principle from each of these cases, and from subsequent Supreme Court opinions such as Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 106 S.Ct. 1669, 90 L.Ed.2d 1 (1986), Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U.S. 164, 108 S.Ct. 2320, 101 L.Ed.2d 155 (1988), and even Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), is that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require individualized sentencing in death penalty cases. What that means is that the jury may not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant’s character or record and, most importantly to the case sub judice, any of the circumstances of the offense. This principle is stated repeatedly by the Supreme Court.
In 1985 the Texas capital murder statute, § 19.03, was amended to add a new category of capital murder, to-wit: murder of more than one person during the same criminal transaction or during different transactions but pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct. See fn. 2, infra. Acts 1985, 69th Leg. ch. 44, § 1, eff. September 1, 1985. In conjunction with this amendment, Art. 37.071 was amended to add a new part (f) which addressed submission of the special issues where there were two murder victims. See fn. 1, infra. Acts 1985, 69th Leg. ch. 44, § 2, eff. September 1, 1985.4
Application of the principles from the Supreme Court to the facts in this case clearly calls for a conclusion that Art. 37.-071(f) was unconstitutionally applied as to the appellant. Article 37.071(f) states (with emphasis added):
If a defendant is convicted of an offense under Section 19.03(a)(6), Penal Code, the court shall submit the three issues under Subsection (b) of this article only with regard to the conduct of the defendant in murdering the deceased individual first named in the indictment.
By its terms, the statute limits the evidence which is considered by the jury in answering the special issues.5 The application of *845Art. 37.071(f) in this cause worked as follows.
The jury was informed through testimony at guilt/innocence that Davis repeatedly beat appellant’s head against the sidewalk and the bumper of a car while Holley held a knife on appellant’s companion, but in the third special issue the jury was only asked:
(3) Do you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the conduct of the defendant in killing Kimberly Sue Holley was unreasonable in response to the provocation, if any, by Kimberly Sue Holley?
In answering this issue, the jury was only asked to consider Holley’s conduct in holding the knife on appellant’s friend and threatening his friend’s life. Thus, the jury was not asked to consider appellant’s response (which was arguably quite reasonable) to Davis’s provocation of repeatedly beating him, a critical circumstance of this offense. In fact, by directing the jury’s attention to only Holley’s conduct, the charge implicitly encouraged the jury to not consider the conduct of Holley’s accomplice, Davis, in considering whether or not to assess the death penalty. Thus I find that the operation of Art. 37.071(f) in this case served to prevent the jury from considering this mitigating evidence, upon which a rational trier of fact could have found the appellant deserved a sentence less than death. For this reason I would hold that, as applied to appellant, Art. 37.-071(f) was violative of Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment principles, and I therefore concur in the judgment of the court.
WHITE and OVERSTREET, JJ., join this concurring opinion.

. Article 37.071(f), in effect at the time of appellant's trial, stated:
If a defendant is convicted of an offense under Section 19.03(a)(6), Penal Code, the court shall submit the three issues under Subsection (b) of this article only with regard to the conduct of the defendant in murdering the deceased individual first named in the indictment.

. Section 19.03(a)(6) provides:
(a) A person commits an offense if he commits murder as defined under Section 19.-02(a)(1) of this code and:
(6) the person murders more than one person:
(A) during the same criminal transaction; or
(B) during different criminal transactions but the murders are committed pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct.

.Article 37.071(b)(3), effective at the time of appellant’s trial, states:
(b) On conclusion of the presentation of the evidence, the court shall submit the following [issue] to the jury: ....
(3) if raised by the evidence, whether the conduct of the defendant in killing the deceased was unreasonable in response to the provocation, if any, by the deceased.

. The Supreme Court has not yet addressed the constitutionality of the Texas statute in light of these amendments.

. By its express terms, however, Art. 37.071(f) does not limit the admissibility at punishment of any relevant evidence offered in mitigation, and thus suffers no constitutional infirmity in this regard.