Court Opinion

ID: 9641360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:29:54.308929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:36.861134
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, J.,
concurring.
When faced with claims that assert harm from constitutional violations, this Court frequently cites its decision in Cain v. State, 947 S.W.2d 262 (Tex.Crim.App.1997), for the proposition that only errors that the United States Supreme Court has designated as “structural” are immune to harm analysis.1 In my view, the term “structural” has become as magic word. Errors called “fundamental,” “infecting the entire process,” “basic,” and other synonyms for the meaning assigned by the Supreme Court to the word “structural,” are dismissed because the Supreme Court did not use the magic word to describe a particular error. Such treatment elevates form over substance. The proper analysis is to examine the effect of the alleged error on the trial process, just as the Supreme Court did in Fulminante.
After listing specific errors that are not subject to harm analysis, the Court set out the basis for finding that the listed errors were “structural”; “Each of these constitutional deprivations is a similar structural defect affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than simply an error in the trial process itself.”2 Fulminante at 310, 111 S.Ct. 1246. While “structural”may be a useful shorthand for such an defect, it is illogical to assume that the four justices who were on the Court at the time of Fulminante, the five justices who have joined the Court since then, and all future judges will use that word as a term of art, continue to use it, or even use it again to describe such a defect in the trial process. We should adopt as our standard for “defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism, which defy analysis by ‘harmless-error’ standards,” the true standard of Fulminante: a defect affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than simply an error in the trial process itself.
I concur only in the judgment of the Court.

. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991).

. "Without these basic protections, a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence, and no criminal punishment may be regarded as fundamentally fair.” Fulminante at 310, 111 S.Ct. 1246, quoting Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 577-78, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 92 L.Ed.2d 460(1986) (citation omitted).