Court Opinion

ID: 9777710
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:20:57.233676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:00.009573
License: Public Domain

COHEN, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with Justice Hedges’s opinion. I write only to respond to Justice Taft’s opinion.
Justice Taft agrees that the trial court erred by admitting the remote felony conviction. He criticizes the rule that only misdemeanors of moral turpitude can revitalize remote felony convictions. He contends the proper approach is that in Theus v. State, 845 S.W.2d 874 (Tex.Crim.App.1992).
Theus reached the same result as Justice Hedges’s opinion; it reversed a judgment because a felony conviction was erroneously admitted and caused harm. Id. at 881-82. But Theus says nothing about the issue before us, whether misdemeanors that are not crimes of moral turpitude can revitalize prior convictions that are remote under rule 609(b). Theus does not mention rule 609(b); it does mention misdemeanors; it does not mention remoteness.
Justice Taft also discusses Sinegal v. State, 789 S.W.2d 383 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1990, pet. ref d). Like Justice Hedges’s opinion and like Theus, Sinegal reversed a judgment because remote prior convictions were admitted. Most importantly, the Sinegal opinion repeatedly (three times) restated the rale that misdemeanors must be offenses of moral turpitude in order to refresh remote prior convictions. Id. at 387-88. Sinegal relied on Davis v. State, 545 S.W.2d 147 (Tex.Crim.App.1976), and McClendon v. State, 509 S.W.2d 851 (Tex.Crim.App.1974) (op. on reh’g), as does Justice Hedges.
Justice Taft recognizes the authority of Davis v. State, 545 S.W.2d 147, McClendon v. State, 509 S.W.2d 851, Livingston v. State, 421 S.W.2d 108 (Tex.CrimApp.1967), and Bles sett v. State, 168 Tex.Crim. 517, 329 S.W.2d 434 (1959). Every one reversed a judgment for the same reason the panel majority does here. Theus did not mention, much less overrule, them. They are good law. I believe we are bound to follow them.
Finally, this damaging evidence was not harmless. The State didn’t think so — it mentioned it twice in final argument. Indeed, the State argued in Sinegal, a drug case, that those remote priors were not very harmful because, unlike the primary offense on trial, they were not drug offenses. See Sinegal, 789 S.W.2d at 386. Here, the remote conviction was, like the primary offense on trial, a drag offense.
The law provides that a nonconstitutional error, like this one, “that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.” Tex.R.App. P. 44.2. This type of error will often affect substantial rights. That is why it has caused the Court of Criminal Appeals to reverse so many cases. See Davis, McClendon, Livingston, Blessett. I believe it affected substantial rights here.