Court Opinion

ID: 9645590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:29:26.433091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:29.609925
License: Public Domain

DUNCAN, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part on State’s third motion for rehearing.
In Wyatt v. State, 58 Tex.Cr.R. 115, 124 S.W. 929 (Tex.Crim.App.1910) the prosecuting attorney asked the defendant the following: “ ‘Have you not been convicted and given ten years in this case?’ ” Id., 124 S.W. at 929. The trial court, unprompted by an objection, rebuked the prosecutor and instructed the jury to disregard the question. On appeal, this Court, while acknowledging and endorsing the trial court’s sua sponte intervention as an effort to “minimize the wrong done in asking the question,” Id., evidently judged the prosecutor’s conduct such a flagrant violation of Art. 823 Code Cr. Proc. 1895 (a predecessor statute to Art. 40.08 V.A.C.C.P.) that it nevertheless reversed the defendant’s conviction.
Now, seventy-seven years later, with the figurative stroke of a pen, that statutorily mandated trial principle falls prey to the ravenous contemporaneous objection rule.
The reversible error in this case is not predicated upon the appellant’s responses
*134to the prosecutor’s questions, but instead, as in Wyatt v. State, supra, the questions themselves. Although the appellant volunteered to the jury that he had been in jail for some time it did not know why he had been in jail until the prosecutor asked this series of questions: “What cause was that on?”; “It was tried once before, wasn’t it?”; and “The jury gave you life, didn’t they?”
I can perceive of no greater prejudice to a defendant’s right to a fair trial than a jury being aware that the defendant has not only been previously tried for the same offense but, as in this case, the punishment assessed by the previous jury. Unless of course, the defendant wants the jury to have such information. This is what occurred in Miracle v. State, 604 S.W.2d 120 (Tex.Crim.App.1980). The intentional disclosure of that information by the defendant is what distinguishes Miracle v. State, Id., from this case.
I similarly cannot perceive of any reason that the damage to a defendant’s right to a fair trial by revealing this information is any less in 1987 than it was in 1910. I concur with what the Court said then: “It is unfortunate that we should under such circumstances be required to reverse a case. But we cannot consent to the impairment or infringement of a right which the law in express terms gives every defendant, however humble.” Wyatt v. State, supra, 124 S.W. at 930 I dissent to what the court says now.
Finding the ultimate disposition of the case appropriate, however, I concur with the result reached by the majority.
CLINTON and TEAGUE, JJ., join this opinion.