Court Opinion

ID: 9761152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:32:53.443433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:20.415588
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
dissenting.
I believe that because of what the majority opinion, authored by Judge Clinton, states and holds, as to when objected to error and unobjected to error in the trial court’s final charge to the jury might constitute reversible error, that this Court retreats at least 400 years into the past, at the same time expressly overruling all decisions of this Court that might have been of assistance in making the determination whether error in the court’s final charge constitutes reversible error.
In Ex parte Clark, 597 S.W.2d 760, 761 (Tex.Cr.App.1980), Judge Truman E. Roberts, who authored that opinion for this Court, stated therein, inter alia, that “the failure of the charge to apply the law to the facts ‘impairs the right to trial by jury’ and, therefore, by definition, is ‘calculated to injure the rights of the defendant ... to a trial by jury,’ which right is guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 10, of the Texas Constitution.” Judge Clinton’s opinion for the majority of this Court, in stating and holding what it does, unfortunately does not take into account those wise words of wisdom Judge Roberts once uttered for this Court so few years ago.
Henceforth, when it comes to instructing the jury on the law, and the law as applied *179to the facts of the case, I believe that it will now be permissible for trial judges of this State to give a jury a flawed jewel, rather than “a gem that has been cut and polished by the hard edge of legal experience obtained from both within and without our criminal justice system.” Doyle v. State, 631 S.W.2d 732, at 738 (Tex.Cr.App.1982).
After today, harmless error should prevent even the most egregiously worded jury charge from constituting reversible error. Henceforth, there will be no per se rule of reversible error because of fundamental error in the court’s charge. Cumbie v. State, 578 S.W.2d 732 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), and like decisions of this Court, are no more as they have been expressly overruled by today’s majority opinion. No longer are there any cases that can be used as guides.
Judge Clinton states in the opinion he authors for the majority of this Court that the following nebulous rules will now govern whether an erroneous instruction in the court’s charge to the jury will constitute reversible error:
If the error in the charge was the subject of a timely objection in the trial court, then reversal is required if the error is ‘calculated to injure the rights of the defendant,’ which means no more than that there must be some harm to the accused from the error. In other words, an error which has been properly preserved by objection will call for reversal as long as the error is not harmless. On the other hand, if no proper objection was made at trial and the accused [claims on appeal] that the error was ‘fundamental,’ he will obtain a reversal only if the error was so egregiously harmful that he ‘has not had a fair and impartial trial’ ...” The harm that is inflicted by such an erroneous charge must ‘be assayed in light of the entire jury charge, the state of the evidence, the argument of counsel and any other relevant information revealed by the record of the trial as a whole.
Unfortunately, Judge Clinton, for the majority, fails to give the members of the bench and bar of this State a hypothetical example of just when both objected to error in the court’s charge and error in the court’s charge to which no objection was leveled might somehow rise to the level of reversible error under the new rules. Perhaps, however, as to either, unobjected to error in the court’s charge or objected to error in the court’s charge, none can be conjured up by his brilliant mind.
When will the members of the bench and bar of this State know that error in the court’s final charge to the jury constitutes reversible error? Perhaps in the future, we will learn, much like Lot’s wife did, at the moment when the event occurs.
In light of what the majority opinion ultimately holds, it is obvious to me, if no one else, that much of what this Court has attempted to do in the past ten years-in its efforts to admonish trial judges to fulfill the responsibility that the law casts upon them in carefully instructing the jury on the law, and the law as applied to the facts of the particular case-no longer has any real meaning.
In Doyle v. State, supra, an opinion that I proudly authored for the Court, I stated the following: “Over 400 years ago, it was written: ‘For the office of 12 men is no more than to enquire to Matters of Fact and not to adjudge what the law is, for that is the Office of the Court,and not of the jury,’ ” 1 Plowden 110a, 114a (K.B. 1554), and added a postscript: “But in its instructions to the jury, the trial court must correctly apply the law to the facts of the case.” (737). Alas, those words also no longer have any real meaning.
Notwithstanding what the majority of this Court now holds in the area of the law that governs giving the jury correct instructions on the law, and the law as applied to the facts of the case, I hope and pray that most trial judges of this State will continue to believe that the final charge to the jury represents “a gem that has been cut and polished by the hard edge of legal experience obtained from both within and without our criminal justice sys*180tem,” rather than something that resembles a tasteless smorgasbord.
To the majority’s efforts to have our jurys served with flawed jewels, and a tasteless smorgasbord, I respectfully dissent.