Court Opinion

ID: 9758968
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:57:39.76537+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:18.899995
License: Public Domain

HUDSON, Justice,
concurring.
The State’s attorney is granted potent procedural advantages in closing argument. First, he is afforded the privilege of both opening and closing the arguments. Second, because his closing remarks are not restricted to rebuttal, the prosecutor may advance theories and deductions he knows cannot possibly be answered by opposing counsel. If skillful, he will direct jurors to the most damning evidence, the most condemning conclusions; and his words are last the jury will hear.
Moreover, there are but a handful of topics forbidden to the State’s attorney. *22He may, with boldness and confidence, sum up the evidence. He may make reasonable deductions from the evidence and is afforded wide latitude in doing so. He may forcefully answer the arguments of opposing counsel. He is permitted to make passionate pleas for law enforcement. In fact, the prosecutor is prohibited only in making remarks that denigrate or directly infringe upon a small number of well established constitutional or statutory rights. Even when the prosecutor strays from the proper course of conduct, the judgment will not be reversed unless the improper remark is extreme or manifestly improper, violative of a mandatory statute, or injects new facts, harmful to the accused into the trial proceeding. Wesbrook v. State, 29 S.W.3d 103, 115 (Tex.Crim.App.2000). Not surprisingly, few convictions are reversed due to error in argument. When, however, the State’s attorney consciously and deliberately assaults the law upon which the defendant has posited his defense, the error is by its very nature “extreme and manifestly improper.”
Here, appellant admitted all the elements of sexual assault of a child. He rested entirely on the statutory defense of “medical care.” Tex. Pen.Code Ann. § 22.011(d) (Vernon Supp.2001). In other words, the defendant’s sole defensive theory was that he was, at the time of the offense, providing “medical care” to the victim.
In response, the prosecutor could have properly argued that the evidence did not support appellant’s reliance on the “medical care” defense. For example, the State’s attorney could have argued that: (1) appellant possessed a lascivious intent inconsistent with medical care as evidenced by his alleged kissing and fondling of the complainant on another occasion; (2) appellant’s lack of medical training, in conjunction with the absence of any medical emergency, tends to refute his claim of “medical care”; and (3) appellant’s admission to the complainant that he did not know what he was doing shortly after he digitally penetrated her vagina demonstrates he had no realistic intention of providing “medical care.” However, a prosecutor cannot, as here, argue that the jury should simply ignore the law.
The State’s attorney commenced his closing argument by saying “some laws are really silly.” He went on to say there are some old statutes “that really don’t apply any more ... but nobody has ever taken them off the books.” He then said:
If you find him not guilty because he believed it was medical care, okay. Then you’ve got to live with that, number one.
... If that’s true, then he gets to go home today. He gets to if he can find a 14-year-old or a 15-year-old that he can or, hell, a five-year-old that he can talk into, convince in any way to take her panties down, he can get a stick or a dildo or a microphone or a cucumber, anything, he can put it into her vagina. And when the police come and arrest him the next day, he can say I believed it was medical care. And you would or the next group of twelve would have to let him go.
Although appellant’s objection was sustained, the prosecutor was undeterred. He pursued the same line of argument without regard for the law or fear of the court:
MR. BLAINE [Appellant’s counsel]: That is such a misstatement of the law.
THE COURT: Sustained.
MR. BLAINE: They would have to find—
THE COURT: Sustained.
MR. BREWER [State’s attorney]: Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Blaine can *23stand up and complain all he wants; but that’s what he’s telling you.
His words to you were if the defendant — if you twelve believe that it was the defendant’s belief he was administering medical care. Isn’t that what Mr. Blaine said? Then you have to let him go. Right? That’s what Mr. Blaine is trying to tell you the law is. Now if that’s the law, let me repeat—
MR. BLAINE: That’s not what I’m telling them. That’s what you told them the law is.
THE COURT: Sustained.
MR. BREWER: Let me repeat myself. Then he can go out and get a five-year-old and to this same thing, okay. He can come into Jury Number Two and say I thought it was medical care. And according to what Mr. Blaine says, if the jury believes that he thought it was medical care, not that it was medical care okay, but if he thought is was medical care you got to let him go. How absurd is that?
MR. BLAINE: Judge, I object to him arguing the law is absurd. That’s the law you gave ’em.
THE COURT: Sustained.
MR. BREWER: How ridiculous is that?
MR. BLAINE: Judge, that is the law.
THE COURT: Sustained.
The prosecutor briefly suspended his attack upon the statute to erroneously argue that the jury should consider both appellant’s post-arrest silence and his failure to offer hearsay testimony in his own defense.1 Thereafter, the State’s attorney renewed his attack on the statute by suggesting that when appellant admitted to intentionally placing his finger in the complainant’s vagina, he judicially confessed to committing the offense without regard to the statutory-defense:
[By the State’s attorney] He got kind of real cute when I showed him the indictment. He said you know what, everything on there is absolutely correct. I admit to it except that word unlawfully.
But what he didn’t notice is between the words unlawfully, intentionally or knowingly. There’s not an “and” there. It’s a comma. If you did it knowingly, you are guilty.
MR. BLAINE: That is not true, Judge. You have to do it unlawfully.
MR. BREWER: Judge—
THE COURT: Sustained.
MR. BREWER: Ladies and gentlemen, you read English. Each of your read English. If it says you can have an *24apple comma orange comma or banana, do you have to take the apple and orange and the banana? No.
It says if you unlawfully comma intentionally or knowingly do any of this— excuse me, do all of this you are guilty.
I’m not going to argue with the Court. I’m not going to argue with Mr. Blaine. Read it. That’s what it says. If you think this is smoke and mirrors, it’s all right here.
When he says oops I did not unlawfully do it but I did intentionally do it but I did knowingly do it guess what? It only has to be one of the three. He’s guilty.
MR. BLAINE: That’s definitely not true. You tell them on the second—
THE COURT: Overruled.
MR. BREWER: Overruled. That means I’m right. That means I’m right.
By definition, a statutory “defense to prosecution” presumes the defendant committed the acts alleged in the indictment. Thus, the State’s attorney made an improper statement of the law, contrary to the court’s charge, when he argued that appellant’s admission of certain physical acts dispensed with the jury’s need to consider the merits of appellant’s statutory defense. Accordingly, the trial court erred in overruling appellant’s objection.
The State’s attorney asked the jury to ignore section 22.011(d) because, in his view, it was silly. When advocating his case, the prosecutor seems to have followed the mistaken adage that the “law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.”2 Rather than adhering to the actual statutes of this state, the court’s charge, or the repeated rulings of the trial judge, the prosecutor persisted in his misconduct until, at last, error had been both injected into the proceedings and preserved for our review. To hold the error in this case was anything other than “extreme and manifestly improper” would sanction the use of intentional error for tactical advantage.
With these comments, I concur.

. [By the State’s attorney] When was the first time-think about this. This is very important. When was the first time that our wonderful defendant here told anybody about this, his medical intent?
⅜ =⅜ ⅜ qjj jjg say t0 jjjs own pareilts who have sat here throughout this trial? No. Didn’t say anything about I was just checking her hymen.
MR. BLAINE: There’s no evidence of what he said to his parents.
MR. BREWER: Judge—
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, you heard the testimony.
MR. BREWER: Well, ladies and gentlemen, the parents are obviously here. They could have subpoenaed them or called them or just asked them to come to the stand. They’re certainly here. If he had said that, they certainly could have told you about it.
MR. BLAINE: You know they could not have.
THE COURT: Sustained.
MR. BLAINE: You would have objected to it, and it would not have been admissible.
THE COURT: Sustained.
MR. BREWER: When is the first time we hear anything about his medical intent? Two days ago. Is that a little fishy to you?

. James Parton, Life and Times of Aaron Burr 149 (7th ed. 1858).