Court Opinion

ID: 9863329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 03:24:41.446829+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:41:12.934433
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
dissenting.
After making the following correct holding, “it was error for the officer to testify *38regarding the needle marks,” the majority-opinion thereafter makes the following incorrect holding: “We find that the trial court’s action in instructing the jury to disregard the testimony cured the error concerning needle marks on appellant’s arm.”
Ordinarily, I would not take issue with the latter holding. However, almost 12 years ago, in a case from Travis County, this Court in Powell v. State, 478 S.W.2d 95 (Tex.Cr.App.1972), reversed the defendant’s conviction because the prosecuting attorney injected into the case over objection inadmissible evidence in the form of an extraneous offense. That testimony originated “at the Austin Police Department” and concerned a police officer looking at the defendant’s arms and observing needle marks thereon. This Court held, prior to reversing the defendant’s conviction: “The chain of inferences is too long and contains too many gaps to allow the introduction of evidence of needle marks alone to show possible motive for theft. The prejudicial effect of such evidence far outweighs any probative value it might have. To admit such testimony without showing some affirmative link between the theft [of two lawnmowers which the defendant was on trial for stealing] and narcotics would show only that the accused is ‘a criminal generally.’ This, the general rule heretofore quoted prohibits.” (98).
What occurred in this cause is, if not identical to what occurred in Powell v. State, at least a mirror image. The holding in Powell was recently reaffirmed by this Court in Jordan v. State, 646 S.W.2d 946 (Tex.Cr.App.1983). I believe that most prosecutors, as well as most defense attorneys and trial judges, are either fully aware or should be fully aware of what this Court held in Powell v. State, supra.
Although I acknowledge that in Powell v. State, supra, the objection was overruled, whereas here it was sustained, nevertheless, where a rule of law which prohibits the asking of such a question as was asked here is either known or should have been known to the questioner, and has been on the books as long as the one applicable to this cause has been on the books, I am unable to put much stock in whether the objection was sustained or overruled, or whether the trial court instructed the jury to disregard the question and answer. The question for the reviewing court in that instance is whether asking such a question and obtaining an answer is sufficient, standing alone, to constitute reversible error.
Ordinarily, the mere asking of a question by a prosecuting attorney is not reason to reverse a conviction. However, an exception exists: “If the question, as so framed, of and within itself, implies the defendant’s guilt of the misconduct inquired about and amounts, therefore, to proof of a fact, by necessary implication damaging and hurtful to the defendant, that the State was not authorized to prove,” the mere asking of the question may amount to reversible error.” Mounts v. State, 148 Tex.Cr.R. 149, 185 S.W.2d 731, 734 (1945).
The prosecuting attorney in this instance either knew or should have known not to have asked the question and Officer Jensen either knew or should have known not to have answered the question. See Richardson v. State, 379 S.W.2d 913 (Tex.Cr.App.1964). Of course, the trial judge, when the question was asked, should have intervened and sua sponte struck the question from the record.
In light of Powell v. State, supra, the error that resulted because of the asking and answering the question was incurable error, and appellant’s conviction should be reversed because of the error.
I observe another reversible error to have been committed in this cause. The majority has correctly stated in the first part of its opinion the general rule that evidence or testimony that implicates an extraneous offense is inadmissible. However, it fails to apply the rule to the admission into evidence of the sawed-off shotgun that was seized from the trunk of appellant’s vehicle. For the reasons stated by Judge Campbell in Wallace v. State, (Tex.Cr.App.1984) (Pending on Rehearing), as *39well as the reasons stated in Gill v. State, 625 S.W.2d 307 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), the sawed-off shotgun was inadmissible evidence at appellant’s trial.
For both of the above reasons, appellant’s conviction should be reversed and not affirmed. To the majority affirming appellant’s conviction, I respectfully dissent.