Court Opinion

ID: 9759874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:31:26.100178+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:05.729716
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
Granted that the prosecuting attorney was speaking in a context of rehabilitation, still the series of questions she put to the *258jury were immediately taken by the experienced trial judge who heard them to be a comment on the failure of appellant to testify. Just how the majority is able to discern the jury did not take it the same way escapes me.
The majority finds a “more likely interpretation” from what it indicates are related comments by the prosecutor. However, when the context of remarks excerpted are understood, the interpretation made by the majority is not “more likely.”
Attorney for appellant had portrayed his young client in these terms, viz:
“Seventeen years old and he doesn't have family down here concerned with him, he doesn’t have friends down here concerned with him. He has had to make it on his own. I submit to you he got in with the wrong group of people... * * He’s been deserted by people, he got in with the wrong crowd.”
It was in response to such portrayal of appellant as without support of family and friends that the prosecutor asked the jury to speculate that appellant was “the rotten apple in the family’s barrel and that’s why none of them are down here to say anything good about him.”
In short, both counsel agreed, albeit from different premises, that appellant was all alone, having no one to testify in his behalf. The jurors are bound to have gotten that message.
Not satisfied with that, the prosecutor went on to submit that appellant was part of a “gang,” but “when they saw what a blood-thirsty fellow they were running with, they got as far away from him as possible.” Having isolated him from family and “gang,” she then focused directly on appellant:
“You know, you may find it hard to believe that by age 17 you can be as mean, as vicious, as self-centered and as totally devoid of fellings [sic] for other human being lives as he is, but that’s the way he is. You think he can be rehabilitated? Look at the witness stand. Was there one shred of evidence before you to tell you he’s going to change, he can be changed, he wants to be changed, he will change?”
The prosecutor did not couch her rhetorical questions in terms of a general failure of the defense to bring forth testimony of appellant’s potential for rehabilitation. Rather, the questions were couched solely in terms of his personal desire and capacity to be rehabilitated. From the jury’s standpoint, this was not a general remark as to absence of evidence but a pointed reference to accused’s failure to testify. Annis v. State, 578 S.W.2d 406 (Tex.Cr.App.1979); Bird v. State, 527 S.W.2d 891 (Tex.Cr.App.1975). Such a comment offends both the State and Federal Constitutions. Nickens v. State, 604 S.W.2d 101 (Tex.Cr.App.1980); Pollard v. State, 552 S.W.2d 475 (Tex.Cr.App.1977).
The State urges this argument is not a comment on accused’s failure to testify, but a response to defense counsel’s plea that the jury consider possibilities of rehabilitation when assessing punishment. However, defense counsel’s argument was not improper, because one objective of the Penal Code is rehabilitation of those convicted under its provisions. See V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Sec. 1.02(1)(B) and cf. Meadowes v. State, 368 S.W.2d 203 (Tex.Cr.App.1963). Therefore defense counsel’s argument was not objectionable. Certainly the State cannot justify a comment on accused’s failure to testify by claiming it is a response to an argument that was not itself objectionable. Johnson v. State, 611 S.W.2d 649 (Tex.Cr.App.1981); Franks v. State, 574 S.W.2d 124 (Tex.Cr.App.1978).
Finally, the State urges that even if the prosecutor commented on the accused’s failure to testify, such comment was cured by the instruction to disregard. But as Judge Tom Davis wrote in Owen v. State, 656 S.W.2d 458 (Tex.Cr.App.1983), the prohibition against a comment on the defendant’s failure to testify is mandatory and the adverse effect of any reference to the accused’s failure to testify is not generally cured by an instruction to the jury. See also Overstreet v. State, 470 S.W.2d 653 *259(Tex.Cr.App.1971). I am unable to say the argument in the instant case was harmless. The likely result of such argument left the jury wondering why the accused did not testify. Id.
The judgment of the court of appeals should be affirmed.
ODOM, J., joins.