Court Opinion

ID: 9777590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:16:13.277363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:56.941819
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, Judge,
concurring.
Appellant claims the prosecutor engaged in misconduct sufficiently egregious to have warranted the granting of his motion for a mistrial and a consequential jeopardy bar to retrial. Even though his mistrial motion was not granted and the trial proceeded to verdict, appellant says retrial should be barred because it would have been barred if the trial court had ruled properly and granted his mistrial motion instead of erroneously denying it. The Court of Appeals held that when a trial court proceeds to a verdict despite a legitimate claim of serious prosecutorial misconduct and the conviction is reversed on appeal due to the misconduct, retrial is not jeopardy barred. Ex parte Davis, 893 S.W.2d 252 (Tex.App.—Austin 1995). We granted review to decide whether the Court of Appeals erred in this holding.
It is not altogether clear on what basis the majority resolves this case. A great deal, if not most, of the Court’s opinion is devoted to re-analyzing whether the prosecutor’s actions were sufficiently reprehensible to have warranted the granting of appellant’s motion for mistrial under Bander v. State, 921 S.W.2d 696 (Tex.Crim.App.1996). That is not the ground upon which we granted review, however.1 The Court’s opinion contains some mention of double jeopardy principles and their application in the mistrial context, but there does not appear to be any analysis upon which the Court’s holding decisively rests.
We fail the bench and bar in our role as a discretionary review court when we avoid directly grappling with the legal question presented in favor of resolving the case on its facts. This said, I will briefly outline the rationale which I believe supports the Court’s judgment today. The question upon which the parties have turned to this Court for guidance is whether a defendant is entitled to have retrial jeopardy barred after an appellate court determines that his motion for mistrial based on prosecutorial misconduct (whether it be misconduct repugnant to Kennedy, supra, or Bander v. State, 921 S.W.2d 696 (Tex.Crim.App.1996)) was erroneously denied.
Analysis should begin with Kennedy. There the Supreme Court, albeit in dicta, assumed that double jeopardy would not bar retrial upon an appellate determination that the trial court erroneously denied the defendant’s motion for mistrial based on prosecu-torial misconduct:
Were we to embrace the broad and somewhat amorphous standard adopted by the Oregon Court of Appeals, we are not sure that criminal defendants as a class would be aided. Knowing that the granting of the defendant’s motion for mistrial would all but inevitably bring with it an attempt to bar a second trial on grounds of double jeopardy, the judge presiding over the first trial might well be loath to grant a defendant’s motion for mistrial. If a mistrial were in fact warranted under the applicable law, of course, the defendant could in many instances successfully appeal a judgment of conviction on the same grounds that he urged a mistrial, and the Double Jeopardy Clause would present no bar to retrial.
Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 676, 102 S.Ct. at 2089-90 (footnotes omitted)(emphasis added). In a footnote to these comments, the Court *18farther noted that it had consistently held there is no jeopardy bar to retrial -when a defendant has been successful in getting a court to set his conviction aside unless it is reversed for insufficient evidence. Four judges in concurrence, referred to the majority’s assumption that an appellate court “would not be obligated to bar reprosecution as well as reverse the conviction” as “irrational.” Id. at 688 n. 22, 102 S.Ct. at 2095 n. 22 (Stevens, J., concurring, joined by Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, J.J.). The question is why would a majority of the Supreme Court consider jeopardy no bar to retrial after an appellate determination that a mistrial should have been granted for pros-ecutorial misconduct, while four other justices view that position as “irrational.” As is often the case in law, there are persuasive arguments on both sides of the matter.
Several courts have set forth the competing sides of this issue, roughly reflecting the arguments presented by the parties in.this case. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals addressed the issue with clarity in United States v. Singer, 785 F.2d 228 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 883, 107 S.Ct. 273, 93 L.Ed.2d 249 (1986):
There is good reason to argue that a criminal defendant whose conviction over a timely motion for mistrial is reversed because of any sort of governmental misconduct should be placed on equal footing with a defendant whose motion properly is granted. The defendant obtains mistrial only if the trial judge apprehends the sufficiently prejudicial misconduct. In reversing, the appellate court simply corrects the trial court’s error. The right of a criminal defendant not to be twice placed in jeopardy should not hang on which court correctly determines that misconduct infected the trial. As the Supreme Court stated in Burks v. United States, [437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978)], when explaining why double jeopardy concerns preclude retrial upon reversal for insufficient evidence, “[T]o hold otherwise would create a purely arbitrary distinction between those in petitioner’s position and others who would enjoy the benefit of a correct decision by the District Court.”
But there is danger in drawing too much from Burks’ grudging exception. Indeed, in Burks itself, the Court stated that governmental misconduct was not among the grounds for reversal that implicated the double jeopardy clause. And as the Court added in Oregon v. Kennedy: “This Court has consistently held that the Double Jeopardy Clause imposes no limitation upon the power of the government to retry a defendant who has succeeded in persuading a court to set his conviction aside, unless the conviction has been reversed because of insufficiency of the evidence.” If the bedrock interest supporting the double jeopardy prohibition is protection of the defendant’s “valued right” to have a verdict rendered by the first jury,, then the dangers which the prohibition seeks to avoid are more attenuated when the first trial goes to verdict, since the defendant has not lost his chance for acquittal by the first jury. Thus it can persuasively be argued that the double jeopardy clause should not be read to impose the drastic remedy of dismissal of the indictment following reversal of a conviction on the basis of misconduct.
Id. at 239-40 (citations omitted). Both sides of the issue have also been well articulated by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals:
... When a defendant moves for a mistrial because of a prosecutor’s misconduct ..., an appellate reversal based on that same misconduct seems equivalent to a determination that the district court erred in ruling on the mistrial motion. It seems anomalous to say that identical prosecutorial misconduct will create a constitutional bar to retrial when the district court correctly grants a mistrial but not when the district court erroneously denies the mistrial request.
On the other hand, under Kennedy the double jeopardy clause is concerned only with prosecutorial misconduct that is intended to provoke a mistrial. When a mistrial is not declared, then the prosecutor’s efforts have been unsuccessful. The dangers that the Kennedy exception was intended to prevent—that the defendant might lose his “valued right to complete his trial before the first jury,” and that the *19prosecutor might be seeking a more favorable opportunity to convict—are more attenuated when the defendant is convicted by the first jury but an appellate court reverses for prosecutorial misconduct. In such a case, the defendant has not lost his chance for an acquittal by the first jury, and it seems unlikely that any prosecutor would intentionally lay a basis for appellate reversal in order “to subvert the protections afforded by the Double Jeopardy Clause.”
United States v. Singleterry, 683 F.2d 122, 124 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1021, 103 S.Ct. 387, 74 L.Ed.2d 518 (1982).
To summarize, the argument in support of allowing a jeopardy bar after an appellate determination is based largely on the idea that a defendant’s jeopardy rights should not turn upon which court makes the determination that the government’s misconduct infected the proceedings. The argument in opposition to permitting a jeopardy bar after an appellate determination looks beyond the government conduct to the actual fruition of that action. In my view, the later position, while it may seem unfair, is more consistent with the purposes underlying the double jeopardy bar in Kennedy and Bauder situations.
The Double Jeopardy Clause protects a defendant against multiple prosecutions for the same offense. In the mistrial context the Supreme Court has recognized that as part of the prohibition against multiple prosecutions, the Double Jeopardy Clause affords a defendant “the valued right to have his trial completed by a particular tribunal.” Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 671-72, 102 S.Ct. at 2087 (quoting Wade v. Hunter, 336 U.S. 684, 689, 69 S.Ct. 834, 837, 93 L.Ed. 974 (1949)). This right lies at the heart of the narrow exception2 permitting a jeopardy bar where a mistrial was granted pursuant to the defendant’s motion based upon prosecutorial misconduct of the nature discussed in Kennedy (or under the Texas Constitution, Bauder). In Bauder, we emphasized the right that is lost when a mistrial is granted as a result of prosecutorial misconduct, stating, “When this happens, we think the government should bear responsibility for denying the defendant his right, secured by the Texas Double Jeopardy Clause, to be tried in a single proceeding by the jury first selected.” Bauder, 921 S.W.2d at 699 (emphasis added). When the State’s conduct does not in fact invoke the mistrial, then the defendant gets his right to be tried in a single proceeding by the jury first selected, although admittedly the proceeding has been tainted. Once a proceeding to verdict has occurred, a defendant’s double jeopardy rights are not implicated by a mistrial situation.3 There has not been a mistrial. The fact that there should have been a mistrial is trial error that the defendant can raise on appeal, to which jeopardy principles do not apply.
We addressed this issue over fifteen years ago in Durrough v. State, 620 S.W.2d 134 (Tex.Crim.App.1981), there rejecting the defendant’s claim that his retrial should be barred by double jeopardy because of prose-cutorial misconduct in an earlier trial:
The Double Jeopardy Clause does protect a defendant against governmental actions *20intended to provoke mistrials so as to afford the prosecution a more favorable opportunity to convict the defendant^4 But when the trial proceeds to its conclusion despite a legitimate claim of serious prejudicial error, the Double Jeopardy Clause will present no obstacle to a retrial if the conviction is reversed on appeal. In the present case the alleged misconduct did not result in a mistrial. The appellant was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death. That judgment was reversed on appeal and the case was remanded for a new trial. We reject appellant’s contention that the alleged misconduct was a bar to further prosecution in this case.
(citations omitted).
Appellant’s argument focuses on the nature of the government’s conduct alone, rather than the circumstances provoked by the conduct. If conduct alone were at issue, the further question would be whether appellant need request a mistrial at all. But it is the circumstances arising from the government misconduct that justify a jeopardy bar under Kennedy and Bauder—it is the fact that the government misconduct leads to the granting of a mistrial and consequential denial of the defendant’s right to have , that jury render a verdict, that justifies the narrow exception to the rule that jeopardy does not bar retrial when mistrial arises from a defendant’s motion.
I recognize that this view would place no small amount of responsibility on trial judges to conscientiously consider and rule on motions for mistrials based on prosecutorial misconduct under Kennedy or Bauder. But trial courts are better positioned than appellate courts to determine when circumstances cry out for a mistrial. I would trust trial courts to grant mistrials when required under the law irrespective of the jeopardy implications, knowing that a jeopardy bar would not be imposed if the mistrial were denied and such denial was found to be in error by an appellate court.5
For these reasons, I concur in the judgment of the Court.

. Even the other concurring opinion recognizes that “this case does not present the issue of whether ‘prosecutorial misconduct' occurred.” McCormick, P.J., concurring at 15, n. 1.

. After a verdict is rendered, whether a conviction or acquittal, the State cannot reprosecute for the same offense. The same is not true when the defendant has sought and received a reversal of his conviction (unless the reversal is based upon insufficient evidence under Burks). In these circumstances, the State can retry the defendant. When trial is aborted prior to a verdict pursuant to a mistrial over the defendant’s objection, double jeopardy does not bar retrial as long as the mistrial was justified by “manifest necessity.” When the mistrial is granted at the defendant's request, however, double jeopardy generally will not bar retrial. The one narrow exception to this rule was fashioned by the Supreme Court in Kennedy and, under the Texas Constitution by this Court in Bauder—when the mistrial motion granted at the defendant's request is based upon prosecutorial misconduct that was intended to induce a mistrial or when the prosecutor was aware but conscientiously disregarded the risk that his conduct would compel the defendant to request a mistrial.

. The State suggests in its brief that evidence tainted by the prosecutorial misconduct should not be admitted on retrial. I would be inclined to leave this for the trial court to address when raised by the parties on retrial. See Cook v. State, 940 S.W.2d 623, 628 (Tex.Crim.App.1996)(plurality opinion)(stating that evidence tainted by prosecutorial misconduct in first trial not admissible on retrial based on due process and fundamental fairness).

. For this proposition, we cited United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600, 611, 96 S.Ct. 1075, 1081, 47 L.Ed.2d 267 (1976), a pre-Kennedy opinion in which the Supreme Court stated, “The Double Jeopardy Clause does protect a defendant against governmental actions intended to provoke mistrial requests and thereby to subject defendants to the substantial burdens imposed by multiple prosecutions.”

. A trial court's granting of a mistrial under Kennedy or Bauder, is not necessarily unreviewable. The State may seek to retry the defendant, whereupon the defendant may assert a claim of double jeopardy. The State can appeal from a determination that jeopardy lies. See TexCode Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 44.01 (a)(4)(state can appeal from order sustaining claim of former jeopardy).