Court Opinion

ID: 9641843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:41:31.042935+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:40.226229
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
Bitter irony marks disposition of the eleventh ground of error — the issue of future dangerousness.
We are told at the outset that appellant was then 17 years of age and at page 449 that there are “possible mitigating factors such as the defendant’s youth or state of mind...,” but if age of this appellant is given consideration anywhere in the opinion I have yet to find it. See Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982).
The opinion recites and holds against appellant testimony of school officials and a probation officer as to his “behavior and attitude problems in school [and] his disregard for rules and the right of others.” To the extent those are symptomatic of deeper emotional problems, such evidence is “at once damning and mitigating,” Stewart v. State, 686 S.W.2d 118, 125 (Tex.Cr.App.1984) (Clinton dissenting, joined by Teague and Miller, JJ.). Despite those problems appellant managed his life without ever being arrested. Yet, none of that is carefully considered and evaluated in mitigation, as it should be, by merely “comparing” Eddings v. Oklahoma, supra.
Finally, the facts, inferences and rationale relied on by the opinion to demon*450strate that up to the moment appellant grabbed a gun from Stanley and threatened Stephen Horton, the deceased, Tom Sauls was not an accomplice as matter of law or fact would also serve to make appellant similarly blameless. From some mitigating elements mentioned in decisions discussed in the opinion it seems to me that one who has never before been arrested is entitled to have his first criminal act, albeit “senseless” and deliberate, examined in light of favorable mitigating circumstances and apparent extemporaneity of his conduct. Taking an unconstitutional approach at page 449, the Court does not do that.
I dissent.