Court Opinion

ID: 9644891
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:07:40.315754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:19.490876
License: Public Domain

McCORMICK, Judge,
dissenting.
Today the majority of this Court disregards time-honored precepts of appellate procedure and institutes a new policy of discretionary review that both narrowly and unnecessarily restricts the authority of this Court in reviewing decisions by the intermediate appellate courts of this State. The crux of the majority opinion handed down this day may be stated simply: This Court shall not consider any point of error or reply thereto unless “properly” presented to and decided by the appeals courts below. My dissent today goes both to the majority’s unwarranted willingness to shift or equalize the burden on direct appeal from the appellant to the State, as well as the result obtained under the majority's faulty analysis of appellate “notice.”
It is axiomatic that a reviewing court should first determine whether a point of error is properly before it in a procedural context before moving on to decide the merits of the claim. If an objection made at trial is different than the argument made on appeal, nothing is preserved for review by the appellate court. Cravens v. State, 687 S.W.2d 748 (Tex.Cr.App.1985); Hodge v. State, 631 S.W.2d 754 (Tex.Cr. App.1982); Vanderbilt v. State, 629 S.W. 2d 709 (Tex.Cr.App.1981); Nelson v. State, 607 S.W.2d 554 (Tex.Cr.App.1980). In other words, the burden is upon the defendant-appellant to present properly his point of error to the appeals court so that a particular point comports with the trial objection. This burden is consistent with the notion that the convicted defendant carries the burden of proof on appeal. In this same vein, the State carries no such burden, given the fact that the State has no right of direct appeal from an adverse verdict. In fact, the State may freely choose whether it wishes to file a brief in response to an appellant’s brief, or to forego the same. The burden remains upon the defendant-appellant to prove that his point or points of error are properly before the court of appeals, so that the appeals court can determine whether it may reach and rule upon the merits of the particular claim.
In the case at bar, appellant failed to present properly his ground pertaining to suppression of the photographs for the very reason that he failed to preserve any such error with a proper objection in the trial of his case. Appellant’s pretrial motion to suppress and his trial objections as to this evidence all were directed solely to whether sufficient evidence existed which would constitute probable cause to issue the search warrant, not to the issue appellant first argues on appeal as regards the signatory defect occasioned by a judge not listed in the statute signing the evidentiary warrant. The appeals court below, without first examining whether such error was preserved by appellant, jumped to the merits of this point of error, apparently justifying their leap in judicial authority by noting *301that the State, on submission, had acknowledged the error. I find no such admission in reading the State's brief on this point of error, the closest statements to an admission or “confession” being made in terms of the State’s “alternative” argument that, even if the warrant was invalid, or, assuming the appellant’s premise of an invalid warrant was correct, error was harmless as the evidence was merely cumulative.
In discussing our rules of discretionary review, the majority cites several cases wherein we have attempted to define those matters which are properly before this Court in reviewing the decisions of an intermediate court of appeals. In Lambrecht v. State, 681 S.W.2d 614 (Tex.Cr.App.1984), we said:
“The Rules of Post Trial and Appellate Procedure governing petitions for discretionary review in this Court do not authorize review of claims which have not been presented in an orderly fashion and determined by the appropriate court of appeals.”
Again in Arline v. State, 721 S.W.2d 348 (Tex.Cr.App.1986), we opined:
“However, our review is limited to those points of error decided by the courts of appeals, included in petitions for review and granted as grounds for review.”
See also, Humason v. State, 728 S.W.2d 363 (Tex.Cr.App.1987).
The nub of the opinion today, as it appears to me, is that a properly presented, orderly claim must be presented to the Court of Appeals, decided by that intermediate tribunal, and presented to this Court through the petition process before we may rule on the issues presented. As applied to the defendant, given his right to appeal the verdict below, I have no problem with such analysis, except that the majority opinion implies policy that would severely undercut or eliminate in whole this Court’s right to review unassigned error “in the interest of justice.”
As to application of such a doctrine to the State, the logic of the majority position defies reason. Even though the State has no right to appeal, and is not required to respond to an appellant’s points of error on direct appeal, the majority would have us from this time on judge the State’s arguments in support of a presumably valid conviction with the same standard that we apply to the appellant. By its action today, the majority effectively shifts the burden to the State to rebut a convicted defendant’s allegation on appeal or pay the price of reversal. They will also excuse intentional or unintentional oversights made by the intermediate courts of appeal in reaching its decision in a particular cause. They explicitly hamstring our own authority to review the record to determine whether an intermediary court has erred in deciding an issue. Finally, the majority sends a signal to the bar and our trial judges that one of the most basic tenets of good trial practice, that of preserving error in the record, may be disposed of by adroit packaging and argument on direct appeal, because this Court will refuse to examine whether a particular point of error was properly decided by our subordinate courts of criminal jurisdiction in the absence of the State pointing out the error for those courts. Are we not today relieving our intermediate appellate courts of their obligation to determine the appropriateness of an appellant’s claims by placing the burden upon the State to rebut those claims while lacking de jure standing to appeal the verdict in its own right? The logic of such a position is lacking. We are not confronted today with a situation where the Court is “ignoring, disregarding or violating” the rules of appellate procedure by deciding this case on the ground that appellant failed to preserve error in the trial court below. We should simply confirm our long standing rule that unpreserved error presents no ground for review. Just as the issue of a signatory defect was not before the trial court or the Court of Appeals, nothing is presented for review by this Court where there was no objection made in the trial court on the same basis as the ground of error on appeal. Rovinsky v. State, 605 S.W.2d 578 (Tex.Cr.App.1980); White v. State, 486 S.W.2d 377 (Tex.Cr. App.1972).
*302I would also add that even under the majority’s analysis, the issue has been wrongly decided. The majority says that
“the State did not claim below and the opinion on original submission never mentions there might be a problem with preservation of error.”
* * * * sfc * ,
“The State may not concede the error, as it did below, and then for the first time submit here that very complaint withheld from the court of appeals, secure in the thought that this Court will determine the court of appeals erred in deciding consequences of the error the State confessed to it in open court....”
First, as earlier stated, review of the record does not disclose that the State “conceded” error, but simply argued in the alternative. Second, the State addressed the issue, albeit modestly, under its reply to appellant’s second ground of error to the court of appeals. I believe that the State placed the appeals court on sufficient “notice” of the defect in appellant’s claim to satisfy the majority’s new found policy where it was written:
“Note also that although the Appellant objected to the introduction of this (photographs) testimony, it was not on the grounds that the testimony was obtained or anyway excludable based upon the invalid search warrant.” State’s brief, page 9.
For the reasons above, I must dissent.
W.C. DAVIS and WHITE, JJ., join in this dissent.