Court Opinion

ID: 9771241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:37:33.985943+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:27.316008
License: Public Domain

BROOKSHIRE, Justice,
concurring.
I readily concur with the Court’s opinion relevant to the appellant’s point of error number two. By this brief concurrence there is added an additional ground for overruling point of error number two. Con-cededly, a prosecutor violates our State and Federal Constitutions when that prosecutor comments on an accused’s failure to testify. See Garrett v. State, 632 S.W.2d 350 (Tex.Crim.App.1982); Tex.Code CRIM.PROC.Ann. art. 38.08. Query: But what constitutes a comment on the accused’s failure to testify? An accepted standard is whether the prosecutor’s remarks and arguments were manifestly intended or characterized in such a mode or manner that the jury would naturally and necessarily take the remarks and arguments as a comment on the accused’s failure to testify. Owen v. State, 656 S.W.2d 458 (Tex.Crim.App.1983). In Owen, supra, the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote:
The language of such a comment must be either manifestly intended, or of such a character that the jury would naturally and necessarily take it to he a comment on the defendant’s failure to testify, (emphasis added)
My opinion is that the State’s argument simply did not meet the test of what is a comment under Owen v. State, supra. The challenged remarks, in my view, are not manifestly intended to be a comment; nor were the challenged remarks naturally and necessarily to be taken by the jury as a comment on the accused’s failure to testify. Of course, the language used must be more than an implication or an indirect allusion to the accused’s silence. Thus, on this additional basis I concur.
Moreover, the prosecution asked the jury to remember the robbery; that a man was shot in the back after quite a chase; that there was no evidence of a gun. The remainder of the remarks were logical, reasonable deductions and a summation of that phase of the evidence. Alejandro v. State, 493 S.W.2d 230 (Tex.Crim.App.1973).