Court Opinion

ID: 9857441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:34:44.336664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:26.711331
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority rejects applicant's contentions that he was entitled to an instruction on mitigating evidence to account for his proof of voluntary intoxication, disadvantaged background, and youth. My dissenting views have been ventilated elsewhere, and I fall back on those now. See e.g., Ex parte Rogers, 819 S.W.2d 533 (Tex.Cr.App.1991) (Clinton, J., dissenting); Lackey v. State, 819 S.W.2d 111 (Tex.Cr.App.1991) (Clinton, J., dissenting on appellant’s motion for rehearing); Jackson v. State, 822 S.W.2d 18 (Tex.Cr.App.1991) (Clinton, J., dissenting to refusal of appellant’s motion for rehearing). Because the Court also denies applicant relief on his Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claim, I write further.
For a number of years this Court failed to comprehend the full impact of decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978) and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982). Accordingly, the Court held that there was no Eighth Amendment problem with the operation of Article 37.-071, V.A.C.C.P., at least so long as capital defendants were allowed to present unlimited mitigating evidence at trial. It did not matter to the Court that under our statutory scheme jurors might have no occasion to effectuate that evidence.
“Rather than acknowledge the circumstantial inadequacy of 37.071(b)(2) to accomplish the mandate of Lockett and its progeny, a majority of this Court has blithely said, time and again, that in considering whether to impose a death sentence the jury must be allowed to consider whatever evidence of mitigating circumstances the defense can bring before it. But they have also repeatedly denied the utility, much less necessity, of informing the jury that they may so consider the evidence.”
Stewart v. State, 686 S.W.2d 118, 126 (Tex.Cr.App.1984) (Clinton, J., dissenting). Indeed, until the decision in Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), this Court steadfastly refused to acknowledge what the Supreme Court found to be a principle firmly embedded in its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, viz: that jurors must be empowered to give full effect to all mitigating evidence, not just that which militates in favor of negative answers to our particular statutory special issues. Allowing presentment of mitigating evidence having no bearing on special issues was certainly correct; but it was hardly all that the Eighth Amendment required. By repeatedly denying “the utility, much less the necessity” of providing the jury a mechanism by which to assess a penalty less than death on the basis of such evidence, this Court offered a placebo, not a remedy.
But alas, the placebo has proved to be an elixir, a veritable cure-all. For today the majority holds what was intimated in Ex parte Herrera, 819 S.W.2d 528 (Tex.Cr.App.1991), viz: that because consistent with our caselaw applicant could have presented any mitigating evidence he wished at trial, his failure to do so amounted to no more than a choice of strategy, not ineffective assistance of counsel. I would readily accept such reasoning in a post-Penry prosecution. In that context counsel will know that presentment of mitigating evidence that goes beyond the scope of special issues will entitle him to an instruction to which the jury can respond with a life sentence. If counsel is afraid that such evidence has a greater tendency to persuade the jury to answer a special issue “yes,” however, than it has to persuade that life is a more appropriate response irrespective of the answers to special issues, he may certainly make the strategic *508decision to forgo presenting that evidence to the jury. It would not occur to me to call that ineffective assistance of counsel. But in a pre-Penry prosecution, given this Court’s caselaw, presenting mitigating evidence outside the special issues would not assure counsel of a jury instruction. If the evidence militates in favor of affirmative answer to a special issue, it would only hurt his client, without any potential tradeoff. This Court induced the tactical decision not to present mitigating evidence by insisting that presentment was all he was entitled to under the Eighth Amendment. How ironic that the Court now holds counsel was not ineffective in failing to present that evidence because he was, after all, entitled to present it under our then-extant caselaw.
“We should not now deny a Sixth Amendment ineffective counsel claim because of a court induced ‘tactical’ decision to avoid helping the State satisfy its burden of proof. See May v. Collins [904 F.2d 228], at 282-34 [(CA 5 1990)] (Reavley, J., concurring).”
Ex parte Herrera, supra, at 532 (Clinton, J., dissenting). Because the majority does, I respectfully dissent.
BAIRD, J., joins.