Court Opinion

ID: 9611622
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:58:36.687133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:15.550857
License: Public Domain

WALKER, Justice,
concurring.
I cautiously, confusedly, and respectfully concur with the majority’s affirmance of appellant’s conviction. Truthfully, the present state of the law regarding the propriety of submitting the defensive issue of “mistake of fact” is entirely unclear to me. At first blush, my examination of Bruno v. State, 845 S.W.2d 910 (Tex.Crim.App.1993), a plurality opinion,1 led me to conclude that it is reasonable to hold that when the state of the evidence would not permit a jury to convict a defendant if it believed his “mistake of fact” and at the same time it believed the complaining witness’ testimony, the mistake of fact merely “negating” an essential element of the offense, a mistake of fact instruction is not warranted. Later, in a moment of apparent deja vu, I recalled a very brief, but, nevertheless, very perplexing ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals reversing an opinion out of this Court, authored by this writer. The opinion in question is unpublished; therefore, it may not be cited as authority. Tex.R.App.P. 47.7. Attached to that opinion was a dissenting opinion filed by Judge Johnson, in which Judges Meyers and Price joined. I reproduce it in its entirety below as an appendix to this con*732currence. It contains a concise, reasonable, and, as I see it, legally airtight discussion of the state of the law on mistake of fact instructions. Am I able to rely on this superb piece of legal scholarship as authority? For three reasons, the answer is “no.” First, it is an unpublished opinion. Second, it is an unpublished dissenting opinion. Third, it is an unpublished dissenting opinion attached to a majority opinion which explicitly reversed this Court on the identical legal issue presented in the first point of error in the instant case. I therefore concur in the affirmance of the appellant’s conviction, as appellant suffered no harm because his requested mistake of fact instruction was encompassed in the trial court’s jury charge which instructed the jury to convict only if it found beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant knew the officer in question was a police officer. See DeBolt v. State, 604 S.W.2d 164, 168 (Tex.Crim.App.1980).
APPENDIX

. A plurality opinion has no precedential value. Hernandez v. State, 988 S.W.2d 770, 772 (Tex.Crim.App.1999).