Court Opinion

ID: 9857507
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:51:00.732793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:24.641478
License: Public Domain

BENAVIDES, Judge,
concurring.
I am unable to join the Court’s opinion, but concur in its judgment. This ease comes to us on remand from the United States Supreme Court so that we might reconsider our earlier disposition of it in light of Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989). Accordingly, we once again decide whether, under the Eighth Amendment, appellant was entitled to have his jury determine the mitigating significance, beyond that contemplated by the special punishment issues, of certain evidence proffered by him as a reason for imposition of a sentence less than death. This evidence was of several different kinds, and has been grouped for purposes of analysis into the following categories: (1) voluntary service and kindness to others; (2) religious devotion; (3) artistic and poetic talent; (4) family ties; and (5) childhood abuse, together with mental and emotional impairment.
As I perceive it, the central basis for the Supreme Court’s opinion in Penry was that mitigating circumstances relevant to punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment are those circumstances of “the defendant’s background and character [which will support a] belief, long held by this society, that defendants who commit criminal acts that are attributable to [such circumstances] may be less culpable than defendants who have no such excuse.” 492 U.S. at 319, 109 S.Ct. at 2947, 106 L.Ed.2d at 278, quoting California v. Brown, 479 U.S. 538, 545, 107 S.Ct. 837, 841, 93 L.Ed.2d 934 (concurring opinion of O’Connor, J.). In my view, none of the evidence in the first four categories suggested by appellant meets this criterion, for it seems reasonably clear to me that persons with a history of selflessness or community service, religious or family allegiance, and artistic, scientific or literary talent, are not thought less blameworthy for their criminal conduct by any significant segment of our society. See Lewis v. State, 815 S.W.2d 560 (Tex.Cr.App.1991). Rather, if society does regard such characteristics as mitigating, it must necessarily be because persons possessing them are thought to be more valuable than are those who do not, or somehow deserving of greater consideration on account of their important contributions. Whatever other social or political interest such a belief may serve, personal moral culpability plainly has nothing to do with this sense of mitigation.
Of course, it might be noticed that “dangerousness” is also irrelevant to culpability, even though a low probability of it has been held to have significant mitigating effect as a matter of constitutional law. See Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 106 S.Ct. 1669, 90 L.Ed.2d 1 (1986). Restricting one’s understanding of “mitigation” only to that evidence which affects culpability would, therefore, draw the constitutional net too tightly. But, to the extent that evidence has a tendency to prove an accused less dangerous than other offenders, the jury is given full authority under Texas statutory law to express its judgment by answering the second special punishment issue negatively. See Art. 37.071(b)(2), V.A.C.C.P.
Unquestionably, further careful reading of constitutional precedent in this context also seems to imply that “culpability” and “dangerousness” are not the only mitigation criteria required by the Eighth Amendment. See Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U.S. 164, 186, 108 S.Ct. 2320, 2332-2333, 101 L.Ed.2d 155 (1988) (O’Connor, J., concurring). Certainly, I have no reason to suppose that the Supreme Court has come to the end of its mitigation exegesis. But neither have I any clear picture of the direction that exegesis is likely to take in the future. In my judgment, the Supreme Court has not yet provided a constitutional theory of mitigation sufficiently general in scope to enable application of it to *777evidence which does not bear specifically on issues of culpability or dangerousness. Accordingly, it seems prudent under circumstances as they presently exist for this Court fully to effectuate the doctrine’s current scope without extending it to regions as yet unexplored by the Constitution’s highest court.
I do not mean by this that only evidence identical to that raised by Penry himself is within the ambit of existing constitutional law. As pointed out in Gribble v. State, 808 S.W.2d 65, 75 (Tex.Cr.App.1990), we accept the fact that,
whenever a capital defendant produces evidence of his own character, background, or the circumstances surrounding his offense which, according to contemporary social standards, has a tendency to reduce his moral culpability in a way not exclusively related to the deliberateness of his criminal conduct, the provocative behavior of his victim, or the probability of his future dangerousness, the United States Constitution forbids imposition of the death penalty upon him by a sentencer given no means to prescribe, based on such mitigating evidence, a less severe punishment.
Clearly, mental retardation and childhood abuse are not the only circumstances which meet this test. But the test itself is the only one I would apply in Texas until further constitutional interpretation makes its modification necessary.
For this reason, the last category of evidence suggested by appellant seems to me the only plausible candidate for a claim that his personal moral culpability was at issue in a way not contemplated by the statutory punishment questions. When a child has been abused by his parents or by some other person in a position of trust or obligation toward him, he may have a greater tendency than normally reared children to develop an impaired conscience. In my experience, society does have an inclination to regard such persons as less blameworthy when, as adults, they offend social norms and standards. It also seems that society is willing to take this position irrespective of the probability that such offenders will continue, for the same reasons, deliberately to commit criminal acts of violence in the future.
Had appellant produced sufficient evidence to raise the issue that his conscience was impaired because he was abused or betrayed as a child, and might therefore be somewhat less culpable for his criminal behavior as an adult, I would be inclined to hold that he could not be put to death consistently with prohibitions of the Eighth Amendment absent a jury instruction of the kind requested, or its functional equivalent. But, in spite of his protestations on appeal, appellant produced no such evidence at trial. I discern in the appellate record no implication that he was treated in any manner that could fairly be characterized as cruel, deceitful, or contemptuous. Instead, what he identifies in his brief as proof of abuse is really nothing more than evidence of a strictly rule-governed upbringing. Because I am unaware of any conspicuous belief among the American people that such an upbringing mitigates moral responsibility for mature misconduct, I cannot conclude that appellant’s death sentence is offensive to the Eighth Amendment within the meaning of Penry v. Lynaugh.
I, therefore, concur in the judgment of the Court.