Court Opinion

ID: 9666596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:21:13.09246+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:30.784306
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
VANCE, Justice.
The State relied on circumstantial evidence in this case for an essential part of its proof. In a motion for rehearing, Kiesehnick assails us for using the standard of review mandated by Geesa v. State in the absence of an instruction in the court’s charge defining “reasonable doubt.” Geesa v. State, 820 S.W.2d 154, 161-62 (Tex.Crim.App.1991).
When we turn to Geesa for further guidance in determining the applicable standard of review, we find this directive about the reasonable-doubt instruction:
We expressly adopt [the specified] instruction on “reasonable doubt” and hold that *162this instruction shall be submitted to the jury in all criminal cases, even in the absence of an objection or request by the State or the defendant, whether the evidence be circumstantial or direct.
Id. at 162.
DEFECTIVE CHARGE
We have confirmed from the record that the jury charge given by the court does not contain the reasonable-doubt instruction mandated by Geesa. Id. Kieschnick did not object to the charge in the trial court or raise the court’s use of an erroneous charge as a point of error in his brief. Nevertheless, we conclude that we have no choice but to reverse the judgment and remand the cause for another trial.

MARIN v. STATE

In Marin v. State, the Court of Criminal Appeals recognized that a defendant’s rights arise from distinct rules that generally fall into one of three categories: (1) absolute requirements and prohibitions; (2) rights which must be implemented by the system unless expressly waived; and (3) rights which are implemented only upon request. Marin v. State, 851 S.W.2d 275, 279 (Tex.Crim.App.1993). Rights which must be implemented unless waived, as well as absolute requirements and prohibitions, cannot be made subject to procedural default because, by definition, they are not forfeitable. Id. Determining which category a right falls into will usually settle the question of whether a procedural default occurred. Id.
Absolute rights cannot be avoided, even with consent. Id. at 280. Implementation of these rights is not optional and cannot be waived or forfeited. Id. at 279. A defendant may complain about the violation of an absolute right or prohibition on appeal without having raised the question in the trial court. Id. at 280. An example of an absolute right is jurisdiction. Id. at 279.
Rights in the second category — waivable rights — do not vanish easily; a litigant does not give them up unless he does so plainly, freely, and intelligently. Id. at 280. If a litigant wants to relinquish this type of right, he must expressly do so, i.e., the “intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.” Id. at 279 (quoting Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938)). Sometimes the waiver must be in writing; always, it must be on the record. Id. at 280. The judge has an independent duty to implement such rights, absent an effective waiver. Id. Many constitutional rights fall into this category. Id. at 279.
The third category includes rights that arise from rules that are optional with a litigant. Id. at 278. Rule 52(a) applies only to rights which the judge must implement on request of a party and which will be forfeited if no complaint is made at trial. Id. at 280; Tex.RApp.P. 52(a). The judge has no independent duty to enforce these rights. Marin, 851 S.W.2d at 278. A litigant is not required by Rule 52(a) to do more for the preservation of a complaint on appeal than was required to secure the right at trial. Id. Ordinary objections to evidence and procedural benefits are included in this category. Id. Rule 52(a) reaffirms these basic principles of adversarial litigation; it was not meant to amend or repeal them. Id. at 280. It does not apply to rights of appeal granted by statutes. See id. at 278.
CHARGE ON REASONABLE DOUBT
The Court’s choice of language in Geesa mandating the reasonable-doubt instruction precludes the possibility that it is a right to be implemented only on request. See id. at 279; Geesa, 820 S.W.2d at 162. That means the right to the instruction is either (a) an absolute right or (b) a right that must be implemented unless expressly waived. See Marin, 851 S.W.2d at 279.
We believe that, although such rights are “relatively few,” the Court intended to create an absolute systemic requirement that every charge, when the burden of proof requires the jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, contain the definitional instruction on reasonable doubt.
Marin recognizes that the category of non-waivable, nonforfeitable systemic rights includes some rights other than those labeled *163jurisdictional. Id. These requirements and prohibitions are implemented independently of the litigants’ wishes. Id. As absolute requirements and prohibitions, they are to be observed even without partisan request; they cannot be lawfully avoided, even with partisan consent. Id. at 280. They are, as stated above, not subject to “procedural default.” See id. at 279. Thus, Marin establishes that the right to the Geesa instruction on reasonable doubt cannot be procedurally defaulted by failing to request or object in the trial court. Id. The question here is: Was Kieschniek’s right to the instruction procedurally defaulted when he failed to complain about it on original submission? For reasons we will explain, we believe the answer is “no.”
The requirement that a complaint be presented to an appellate court in a point of error is a “procedural” requirement, just like the necessity of stating a request or objection in the trial court to preserve complaints about the denial of rights implemented only on request. See Tex.R.App.P. 52(a), 74(d). Having determined that Kieschnick’s right to the definitional instruction on reasonable doubt is an absolute right and because “[d]e-termining which category a right occupies will usually settle the question of procedural default in the context of a particular case,” we find that our implementation of Kiesch-nick’s right to the instruction is not dependent on the procedural formality of a complaint in a point of error. See Marin, 851 S.W.2d at 279. Furthermore, we are authorized to “revise the whole ease upon the law and facts, as exhibited in the record.” Carter v. State, 656 S.W.2d 468, 468 (Tex.Crim. App.1983). Our jurisdiction is not constrained by the concept of “unassigned error.” Id. Thus, the limits of the issues we may address are set only by our own discretion and valid restrictive statutes. Rezac v. State, 782 S.W.2d 869, 870 (Tex.Crim.App. 1990). We hold that the court erred when it failed to include the mandatory definitional instruction on reasonable doubt in the charge given to the jury. Finding that the charge given by the court to the jury is defective, we turn to the question of harm. TexR.App.P. 81(b)(2).
HARM ANALYSIS
A harm analysis is not required.1 See Stine v. State, 908 S.W.2d 429, 430 (Tex.Crim.App.1995) (violation of mandatory, non-waivable constitutional requirement that district court sit at county seat does not require harm analysis).2
*164CONCLUSION
Because the court erred in omitting the definitional instruction on reasonable doubt, we grant the motion for rehearing, set aside our judgment, reverse the judgment of conviction, and remand the cause to the trial court for a new trial.

. Were we called on to make the analysis in light of the nature of the circumstantial evidence described in our original opinions, we would hold that Kieschnick was harmed because we could not say beyond a reasonable doubt that the failure to include the reasonable-doubt instruction did not contribute to his conviction. See Tex. R.App.P. 81(b)(2).

. Our review of Marin causes us to believe that it may contain the basis for a "bright-line” rule for applying Rule 81(b)(2) that the intermediate courts seek. Tex.R.App.P. 81(b)(2). Although Marin does not address the question of harm in relation to the categories of rights that it recognizes, it does address the harm question presented by the case itself — error in denying a waivable right — and concludes that the court of appeals incorrectly applied both Rule 52(a) and 81(b)(2) to the complaint and error. Marin v. State, 851 S.W.2d 275, 282 (Tex.Crim.App. 1993). It speaks in terms of the difficulty in knowing how such an error affected the trial and the "likelihood that [such errors] have influenced the outcome [being] so strong that it is not worth expending the judicial resources necessary to evaluate the effect of the error in particular cases." Id. (quoting Sodipo v. State, 815 S.W.2d 551, 551 (Tex.Crim. App.1990)). Rule 81(b)(2), like Rule 52(a), is court-made. Tex.R.App.P. 52(a), 81(b)(2). We believe the logic of the Marin opinion leads to the conclusion that, if a right is so fundamental to a defendant that it cannot be waived or can be waived only on the record, a violation of that right should be presumed to have resulted in harm. Stated another way: Only when the implementation of a right can be subjected to a court-made procedural-default rule, such as Rule 52(a), can a violation of that right be made subject to a court-made rule requiring a harm-analysis. Thus, harm analyses would be applied only to category-three rights — those that must be implemented on request.
Our own experience is that, when rights that are absolute or are waivable only on the record are violated, any analysis of harm based on a typical appellate record invariably "defies empirical examination.” See Marin, 851 S.W.2d at 282. Giving Rule 81(b)(2) effect only when Rule 52(a) also applies would "assure that the [harmless-error] rule does not exceed its limited purpose [of avoiding] reversal of criminal convictions for clearly unimportant or inconsequential errors." Id.
We recognize that Boozer v. State holds that Geesa's irrebuttable presumption against waiver *164did not also create an irrebuttable presumption of harm and that the failure to give "a small portion” of the instruction did not, absent an objection at trial, egregiously harm Boozer. Boozer v. State, 848 S.W.2d 368, 369-70 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1993, pet. ref'd). Here, the court failed to include the entire reasonable-doubt instruction.