Court Opinion

ID: 9647557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:40:03.226103+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:49.502285
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Judge,
concurring.
I join the majority opinion and write only to address the accusation in the dissent by Onion, P.J., that the majority is so caught up in the fever of result orientism that it ignores prior case law “of which it has been made acutely aware.”
Just today, in Roeder v. State, - S.W.2d - (No. 68,887, delivered April 3, 1985), this Court reaffirmed the doctrine of appellate review that mandates review of a sufficiency of the evidence ground in just this situation. When an appellate court *356finds that evidence was improperly admitted and considered, we do not entertain a challenge to sufficiency of the remaining evidence. Calling the admission of the tainted evidence “trial error,” we remand for a new trial. Burks v. United States, 487 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978), and Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19, 98 S.Ct. 2151, 57 L.Ed.2d 15 (1978). However, if in such a situation appellant complains that “all of the evidence, proper and improper, is insufficient to support the conviction,” then we must consider that claim vis-a-vis double jeopardy. It is, in fact, our usual practice. Porier v. State, 662 S.W.2d 602, 606 (Tex.Cr.App.1984), as cited in Roeder, supra.
In the case at bar, appellant complains that all the evidence, including the stipulations, is insufficient to support the verdict. It is of no moment then that the stipulations are fatally defective except that this defect will assure appellant of at least a new trial. However, if the evidence, including the stipulations, is insufficient then the State has had its bite at the apple and appellant is entitled to a verdict of acquittal.
The majority opinion does nothing more than address the premise under which the court of appeals operated in deciding appellant’s sufficiency ground, and remands the case for determination of that ground. Appellant is entitled to have that ground addressed because jeopardy is raised, and the State is entitled to have that ground addressed correctly. I am “amazed” that the dissent would attempt to deprive appellant of such a basic tenet of due process as the protection afforded by the double jeopardy provisions of our State and National constitutions.