Court Opinion

ID: 9672785
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:00:16.777534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:18.307836
License: Public Domain

DAVIDSON, Judge,
(dissenting).
It is fundamental that before one may lawfully be convicted of a crime in this state the jury — where a trial by jury is had— must find the existence of the elements necessary to authorize the conviction and that unless and until the jury so find, there can be no lawful conviction.
The information in this case alleged that appellant “* * * did then and there drive and operate a motor vehicle, to-wit, *245an automobile, in Harris County, Texas, and did then and there commit an aggravated assault in and upon Jimmy Benjamin Kemp by then and there wilfully and with negligence colliding with and causing injury less than death to the person of the said Jimmy Benjamin Kemp.”
Under that information, here is all that the trial court in his charge required the jury to find in order to convict the appellant :
“THEREFORE, if you believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Kenneth Eugene Potts heretofore on or about the 23rd day of January, A.D., 1958, in the County of Harris, State of Texas, did then and there drive and operate a motor vehicle, to-wit, an automobile, in Harris County, Texas, and did then and there commit an aggravated assault in and upon the person of Jimmy Benjamin Kemp by then and there colliding with and causing injury less than death to the person of the said Jimmy Benjamin Kemp, you will find the defendant guilty of aggravated assault by a motor vehicle * * *.”
To demonstrate the incorrectness of the conclusion by my brethren, which is not sustained by this record, that “The effect of the charge was to authorize a conviction upon a finding that appellant wilfully or with negligence collided with Jimmy Benjamin Kemp,” I copied, verbatim, the above applicable portion of the charge. Nowhere in that charge are the words “wilfully or with negligence” to be found. Nowhere in that charge is the jury required to find that the automobile was unlawfully or negligently operated or driven by the appellant.
Neither in that charge, nor elsewhere, did the trial court define or tell the jury what constituted an assault or an aggravated assault. The jury were therefore free to find the appellant guilty upon their own independent idea and conception as to what, in law, constituted an aggravated assault, without a finding that any assault was committed by and with a motor vehicle. Indeed, under the charge as given the jury was authorized to convict appellant of aggravated assault merely because the automobile he was driving struck and collided with the injured party.
Such is not the law. There is no statute in this state which says it is.
This prosecution was brought under and this conviction was *246obtained as a violation of Art. 1149, Vernon’s P.C., known as the “assault-with-motor-vehicle” statute.
The offense denounced thereby is by a special statute, special and distinct from other statutes dealing with assaults.
For one to be guilty of violating that statute, the driver must either wilfully or with negligence cause the motor vehicle he is driving or operating to collide with and cause some person to be injured.
It is, to me, inconceivable that one could be held to have violated that statute without a finding by the jury of either wilfulness or negligence. Yet that is exactly what my brethren have here held in affirming this conviction.
My brethren justify that affirmance by saying that no matter what the trial court charged the jury or what the facts were that he authorized in his charge as sufficient to convict, the appellant can not complain thereof and this court is without power to review because the appellant or his counsel did not except to the charge of the court and call attention to the fact that no finding of either wilfulness or negligence was required. In other words, what my brethren hold is that it makes no difference how erroneous a charge of the court is or whether the charge measures up to the requirements of the law or whether the charge requires the jury to find the accused guilty of the acts which are violations of the law and charged to have been committed, the accused can not complain of those errors, upon appeal, unless he points out to the trial court the errors in the charge at the time of trial.
Under such holding, appellant goes to jail for a year, not because he has been tried and convicted according to the law but because he failed to object to the court’s charge. He serves a year in jail, then, because of waiver on his part of the right to complain of a charge of the trial court which was not, in fact, any charge at all.
The holding of my brethren is not the applicable and controlling law in all cases. There are very definite exceptions, and these are applicable and controlling here.
Art. 657, C.C.P., says that the jury “* * * are bound to receive the law from the court and be governed thereby.” That statute has been in force in this state since the adoption of our-*247original code and means exactly what it says — that is, that the jury must receive the law from the court.
Art. 658, Vernon’s C.C.P., makes it the mandatory duty of a trial judge in cases such as here presented that before the argument begins he shall “deliver to the jury * * * a written charge, distinctly setting forth the law applicable to the case * =:= n js further provided by that statute that before the charge is read to the jury the defendant shall have a reasonable time to present his objections thereto in writing, distinctly specifying each ground of objection.
Art. 666, C.C.P., provides that “All objections to the charge and to the refusal or modification of special charges shall be made at the time of the trial.”
It is that statute which my brethren say precludes the appellant from insisting that the charge as given in this case was, in fact, no charge at all.
I have no quarrel with the provisions of Art. 666, C.C.P., or its enforcement, but my position is that that statute does not and can not have application unless and until the trial court has complied with the law by giving to the jury a charge distinctly setting forth the law applicable to the case, which means the law applicable to the case as made by the pleadings and the evidence. See Note 11, Art. 658, Vernon’s C.C.P., for attesting authorities.
Unless and until the trial court prepares and presents to the accused his charge which meets those basic requirements, there is nothing to which exceptions or objections may be levelled. Certainly the accused is not required to write the charge for the trial court. Such is the duty of the trial court. The statute so provides.
My views are expressed by this court and found under Note 12 of Art. 666, Vernon’s C.C.P., wherein it is pointed out that a charge may be attacked for the first time upon appeal to this court when the error therein is “of a fundamental nature; that is, if the error be a material misdirection of the law applicable to the case” and calculated to injure the rights of the accused the conviction will be set aside.
A charge which is subject to such fundamental defect is not, in law, a charge setting forth the law of the case.
*248Suppose the trial court should draft a charge which would say to the jury: “Go out and do whatever you think ought to be done with the defendant.” Surely it will not be contended that such charge distinctly sets forth the law of the case or that the accused would have to level any exception thereto.
When the jury, under the charge as given in this case, was authorized to convict appellant according to its own idea or conception of the law, it did so without a charge from the trial court which met the requirements of the law.
If trial by jury and due process of law mean anything at all, they mean a trial where the court gives the law and the jury determine the facts.
The charge in this case amounted to no charge, in the eyes of the law, and the appellant was under no burden to except thereto.
In support of the correctness of that conclusion and to further demonstrate that the charge in this case was fundamentally erroneous, I call attention to the case of Garza v. State, 162 Texas Cr. Rep. 655, 288 S.W. 2d 785, the opinion by my brother Woodley. This is a conviction for the unlawful possession of beer for the purpose of sale in a dry area. In his charge, the trial court authorized the jury to convict upon a finding that the accused possessed “more than one case containing 24 bottles having a capacity of not exceeding 12 ounces each * * as charged in the information. Such charge did not require the jury to find that the bottles contained beer. It was held that such charge was fundamentally erroneous because it authorized the jury “to return a guilty verdict without any finding that the bottles or containers contained beer.” It was also held that the error in the charge was such as could be raised in this court without any exception or objection having been levelled thereto in the trial court. The supporting authorities cited in the opinion demonstrate the correctness of the conclusion reached.
That case is directly in point and controlling here, because nowhere in the instant charge was the jury required to find that appellant’s acts were done “wilfully or with negligence,” which the statute makes a necessary element to render one guilty of a violation thereof. One could no more be guilty of violating the statute denouncing assault with a motor vehicle without a finding that the acts on the part of the accused were done either wilfully or with negligence than one could be guilty of possessing beer without a finding that the bottles possessed contained beer.
*249This case is on all fours with the Garza case. Yet my brethren refuse to follow the Garza case.
The defeat in the instant charge is fundamental. That appellant was injured thereby can hardly be doubted.
Regardless of the defect in the charge, there is another error in this case which requires a reversal of the conviction: The facts do not establish appellant’s guilt.
It looks to me, and I confidently assert, that the state has tried and convicted the wrong man. It was the automobile driven by the police officer that struck the automobile driven by the appellant which caused the latter automobile to collide with and injure the prosecuting witness. If the automobile driven by the police officer had not struck the automobile driven by the appellant, the prosecuting witness would not have been injured, nor would there have been any collision. It was the operation of the automobile by the police officer and the rate of speed at which he was operating it at the time which caused the collision and the injury to the injured party.
Of course the police officer testified that the automobile driven by appellant cut in front of the one driven by him, but we have said so many times that contributory negligence is no defense to crime that it ought not to be necessary to repeat it, here.
By saying that the appellant was guilty of contributory negligence the police officer can not be excused for his own negligent acts which brought about the collision.
In this connection, I call attention to the case of Rowell v. State, 165 Texas Cr. Rep. 507, 308 S.W. 2d 504, not yet a year old. My brethren held there that one who drove his automobile at a rate of speed of seventy miles per hour and ran into and collided with another automobile, when it pulled away from the curb and into the path of the oncoming car driven by the accused, was guilty of an assault with a motor vehicle.
Under that authority, the police officer in the instant case was the person guilty of assault with a motor vehicle; it was not this appellant.
Here, the police officer admittedly drove his automobile at the rate of speed of 120 miles per hour in order to give a traffic ticket to the runner of a red light.
*250Certainly the police officer had the right to pursue appellant, as a trafile violator, for the purpose of giving him a traffic ticket, but in the exercise of this right he had no right to drive his auo-mobile along and over a residential thoroughfare of the city of Houston in such a manner and at such a high and dangerous speed as to endanger and disregard the rights and lives of others, as is evidenced by the injury received by the injured party in this case.
In this connection I am reminded of the words of the late Mr. Justice Holmes, of the Supreme Court of the United States, in Schenck v. U.S., 249 U.S. 47-52, 63 L. Ed. 470-474, where, in speaking of the individual right of free speech, he said:
“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and causing a panic.”
By that same process of reasoning, the right to pursue the appellant, here, for the purpose of giving him a traffic ticket would not give the peace officer the right to drive his automobile at a rate of speed of 120 miles per hour in a residential section of a metropolitan city of this state, since all the time he was charged with knowing that at such a dangerous rate of speed anything could happen.
The police officer can not be excused and ought to be held accountable for this collision and the resulting injury to the prosecuting witness.
Suppose that instead of running into the fleeing car with the car he was driving the police officer had fired his pistol at the automobile and the shot had struck the injured party, would the driver of the automobile at which the officer fired be guilty of shooting the injured party? Under the holding of my brethren in this case, he would be.
Appellant may be guilty of wrong-doing but he is not guilty of committing an aggravated assault upon the injured party by driving his automobile into and causing it to collide with the injured party, as charged in the information and for which he stands convicted and goes to jail for a year.
I can not agree to the affirmance of this case, and I therefore dissent.