Court Opinion

ID: 9678722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:30:07.035273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:07.510391
License: Public Domain

ANDELL, Justice,
concurring.
I am concerned with the apparent disregard for established law in this area. This is the most recent in a line of eases where trial courts have instructed the jury on flight.
A suggestion in a jury charge that certain evidence is true or untrue is a comment on the weight of the evidence. Russell v. State, 749 S.W.2d 77, 78 (Tex.Crim.App.1988). A court’s charge in a criminal case may not assume that any fact has been proved against the defendant, however strong the evidence may be. See Marlow v. State, 537 S.W.2d 8, 9 (Tex.Crim.App.1976). Even when the defendant offers no evidence, the charge should not assume the State’s evidence is true. See id. at 10. There appear to be only two exceptions when a court may comment on the weight of the evidence — -when the court takes judicial notice of a fact, and when the accused makes a judicial admission. See id. at 9-10.
Only the State offered evidence of flight, and the fact was not judicially noticed or admitted. Rather than instructing the jury to “consider flight, if any,” in determining guilt, the court’s charge assumes there was flight. To present this assumption to the jury was error. This error was then compounded by instructing the jury it could consider flight as evidence of appellant’s guilty knowledge. Thus, the instruction not only wrongly magnified a particular fact and gave it unfair emphasis, it also assumed it was appellant fleeing thereby negating appellant’s defense theory.
In my opinion, the very nature of the error in submitting an instruction on flight poisons a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. When, as here, such error is committed in disregard of an established line of eases forbidding it, I believe we have a heightened duty of scrutiny. At some point, such error approaches “structural” error, which is not subject to a harmless error analysis. See Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 *765U.S. 279, 309-10, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1264-65, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991). While that point may not have been reached in this case, it comes dangerously close. I reluctantly concur.