Court Opinion

ID: 9777186
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:01:41.24441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:49.817600
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with the majority opinion that none of the contentions raised by Glen Dale Mulder, appellant, merit reversal. Therefore, I concur in the affirmance of Glen’s conviction. However, I am unable to agree with the majority opinion’s conclusion that the error that occurred in Claude Mulder’s case was harmless. Therefore, I must dissent to the majority opinion’s holding that the error that occurred in Claude’s case was harmless.
Claude was never identified as being at the scene where the crime was committed.
Sarah Williams, a forensic serologist with the Dallas County Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science, testified over objection that after she did a comparison study of blood scrapings found at the scene with blood obtained from Claude she formed the opinion that they were consistent. She also testified that approximately 1.1% of the Caucasian population, of which Claude is a member, would have the same blood type that Claude did, thus enabling one to draw the inference that there was a probability of 99.9% that someone with Claude’s blood type was at the scene of the crime.
The majority opinion correctly agrees with Claude’s assertion that “the trial court erred in issuing an order for a blood ... test when the State’s motion [therefor, which was supported by an investigator’s affidavit,] failed to state specific facts constituting probable cause as required by 18.-01(c) Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.” In this instance, the investigator’s affidavit recites nothing more than that if a blood sample was obtained from Claude, then it would be possible that this in itself would furnish probable cause to connect Claude’s blood type with the blood scrapings found at the scene of the crime. To sustain a *918search for Claude’s blood based upon the investigator’s affidavit would amount to this Court approving the issuance of a search warrant based upon nothing more than the mere or inarticulate hunch, suspicion, or good faith of the affiant. Thus, the majority opinion correctly holds that error occurred in the obtaining of Claude’s blood.
The majority opinion, though agreeing that the trial judge committed error in permitting Williams to testify concerning the blood analysis and comparison that she conducted, nevertheless holds that the error was harmless. Error in the admission of evidence unlawfully obtained becomes harmless, however, only when it is established by the State, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there is a reasonable possibility such error did not affect the guilt stage of Claude’s trial. E.g., Davis v. State, 642 S.W.2d 510, 513 (Tex.Cr.App.1982). To put it another way, if there is a reasonable possibility that such error affected the guilt stage of the trial, the error cannot be considered harmless as to Claude.
Even the State concedes that without the testimony of Williams, matching Claude’s blood type with the blood scrapings found at the scene of the crime, its evidence to sustain Claude’s conviction becomes extremely weak and almost impotent.
In holding that the error was harmless, the majority opinion itself commits error by first seizing upon the accomplice witness’ Green’s testimony. “(1) Green [the accomplice as a matter of law witness] testified that Claude told him how he and Glen committed the offense. Claude told Green how he had cut his arm and broken the shotgun.; “(2) Paul Hamilton [the complainant] also testified that the back window of his house had been broken ... This testimony matched Green’s [the accomplice as a matter of law witness’s testimony] about Claude’s participation.” How can evidence that cannot be considered in determining whether the accomplice witness Green’s testimony was corroborated be used in making the determination that the error was harmless? The majority opinion cites us to no authority for such a strange legal proposition, and my independent research to date has yet to reveal any such strange animal in our law. Nevertheless, the majority opinion does not hesitate to adopt such a wild-looking creature.
To support its conclusion that the error was harmless, the majority opinion also uses the testimony of Deborah Boughner, a medical assistant to a Dr. J. Ken Walker, who testified that she gave Claude a tetanus shot in his left arm on August 11,1979, the day after the robbery had occurred. However, there is no connection between Boughner’s giving Claude a tetanus shot and anything that had occurred at the scene of the crime. For all her testimony shows, Claude could have incurred the bacillus, Clostridium tetani, from a dog bite.
The majority opinion also uses the testimony of Judy Scott, who was a licensed vocational nurse with the Dallas County Health Department, and not a nurse at the Dallas County Jail as the majority opinion states, (the statement in the majority opinion should surprise even Claude as he was not arrested until February 7, 1980), to support its conclusion that the error was harmless. Scott testified that on August 19th, over a week after the robbery occurred, she treated the long laceration that Claude then had in his right forearm. However, this testimony in no way connects Claude to the scene of the crime.
The majority opinion correctly states that Juanita Bennett testified that several hours before the robbery was committed Claude stopped at her fruit stand and asked directions to the Hamiltons’ residence, which she gave him. How this testimony makes the error harmless escapes me.
The majority opinion concludes: “There was plenty of evidence corroborating Green’s [the accomplice as a matter of law witness’s] testimony which placed Claude at the scene.” In light of how hard the District Attorney of Johnson County has worked to show that the testimony of Green, the accomplice as a matter of law witness was corroborated, he should find this statement rather amusing. Even he *919all but concedes that the matching of Claude’s blood type with the blood scrapings found at the scene was highly critical to support the conviction of Claude.
To support its conclusion that the error was harmless, the majority opinion reads more in the nature of an opinion trying to support the conclusion that the circumstantial evidence that was adduced, outside of the accomplice witness’s testimony was sufficient to sustain a conviction. That, however, is not the question. The question is whether the error that infected Claude’s trial was harmless. “An error properly preserved at trial should always, in my opinion, produce a reversal, unless it can be said with confidence, based on all logical possibilities in the case, that the error did not contribute to or affect the conviction. Otherwise, we make nonsense of the jury’s role.” Hayes v. State (Tex.Cr.App., 955-82, March 12, 1986) (Teague, J., concurring opinion). Thus, unless it can be said that the error was certainly inconsequential, it cannot also be said that Claude had a fair trial. “Accordingly, we should view the record in a manner favorable to his position and reverse unless it can be said there was no logical [reasonable] possibility the error affected the outcome.” Hayes v. State, supra.
I also stated the following in the concurring opinion that I filed in Hayes, supra: “Consequently, our assessment of the situation [whether the error was harmful or harmless] requires us to predict what the jury could have done, or might have done, had the error not been committed. Necessarily, therefore, we must also come to some understanding of what the jury did in fact; otherwise, we can never decide whether it might have done anything different ... But, how do we set about the task of deciding whether the error was harmless? How can we know what the jury thought, why it returned a verdict of guilty, or whether the error made any difference? This is the problem ...”
It should be obvious to anyone that the error that was committed in this cause caused Claude harm. We should therefore look to the potential for harm native to the error that was committed — in light of the entire record. But, “How, then, shall we view the record in assessing the harmfulness of [the] error? By what standard of proof shall we measure the possible impact of [the] error upon the jury’s verdict?” Hayes v. State, supra. As mentioned, I am willing to subscribe to the rule that “we should view the record in a manner favorable to [Claude’s] position and reverse unless it can be said that there was no logical [reasonable] possibility the error affected the outcome.”
In this instance, Claude was entitled to be tried without the damaging testimony that came from Williams. After carefully reviewing the record, with the improper and illegally obtained testimony excluded from the record, I am unable to unequivocally state that there is no logical reasonable possibility that the error affected the verdict finding Claude guilty. I would, therefore, reverse his conviction.