Court Opinion

ID: 9666625
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:22:59.374397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:31.038975
License: Public Domain

*914DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring.
Appellate courts in Texas have long held that permissible jury argument must fall within one of four recognized areas: (1) summation of the evidence; (2) reasonable deduction from the evidence; (3) answer to argument of opposing counsel; and (4) plea for law enforcement.1
Our courts have held that evidence regarding implementation of the parole law may not be offered before a jury.2 In the case before us, the State complied with these limitations and offered no evidence regarding the practices of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in granting parole. The argument complained of in Appellant’s second point of error, then, cannot be considered a summation of the evidence, a reasonable deduction from the evidence, or, in this case, an answer to argument of opposing counsel.
Is it a plea for law enforcement? Certainly the parole instruction was crafted for the purpose of increasing jury sentences.3 But if the jury is to arrive at a just and reasonable conclusion based on the evidence alone, it is difficult to understand how the parole instruction may be argued as a plea for law enforcement. While one method of facilitating the jury’s proper analysis of the evidence presented at trial is to explain or paraphrase the law found in the trial court’s charge, this method is really inappropriate since the jury is specifically instructed not to apply the parole instruction to the defendant on trial.4
If we are to be honest, we must admit that the trial and appellate courts have been caught between the rock that prohibits a jury’s considering parole eligibility with respect to the defendant on trial and the hard place that requires the parole instruction be given to the jury. Tex.Code Crim.ProcAnn. art. 37.07 § (4)(a) (Vernon Supp.1995). The jury is placed in an even less enviable position. They are expected to perform the impossible — to listen to the judge charge them on parole eligibility, to listen to the prosecutor argue parole eligibility, to have the written charge which instructs them on parole eligibility, to be told they may consider the parole law, but at the same time to be prohibited from applying that law to the defendant on trial.
When a prosecutor argues parole eligibility, it increases the probability jurors will consider parole in their deliberations. In the case before us, the prosecutor argued:
If a person is sentenced to 60, all the way up to 99 years, anywhere in this range, they become eligible for consideration of parole after 15 years. That 15 years applies, whether the sentence is 60 or 99.
So it is important for you to understand that ... there is no practical difference in a 60 year sentence and a 99 year sentence. [Emphasis added.]
Why is it important for the jury to understand there is no practical difference in a sixty-year sentence and a ninety-nine-year sentence unless they are being asked to apply the parole law to the case before them? In this case, Appellant was ultimately sentenced to seventy years’ confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The majority finds that because the prosecutor used the magic words “a person” instead of “this person,” the remark avoids a direct reference to Appellant. The majority then finds that, although there was no evidence of parole eligibility or the application of parole laws, the argument constitutes both a proper summation of the evidence and a reasonable deduction from the evidence.
We have created many fictions in criminal law. We have created the fiction that the trier of faet determines the actual length of incarceration. We have created the fiction that a jury may be instructed on the application of the parole law and consider the existence of the parole law, but will disregard its application to the person on trial. We have created the fiction that when a lawyer argues *915the parole instruction, the lawyer is simply summarizing evidence or making a reasonable deduction from evidence which is found nowhere in the record. An equally great fiction is that a lawyer who argues the parole instruction is not inviting the jury to consider parole as it applies to the defendant on trial.
Since we do not have legislative authority, we are powerless to change the laws regarding parole and the parole instruction. We do, however, have the authority to question fictions which require suspension of intellectual integrity. We should ask the Court of Criminal Appeals to provide guidance to the lower courts and, balancing the competing interests of prosecution and defense, instruct us that it is improper for either side to argue the parole instruction because it encourages the jury to apply the parole law to the defendant at bar.
RICHARDS, J., joins

. Bell v. State, 724 S.W.2d 780, 802-03 (Tex.Crim.App.1986), cert, denied, 479 U.S. 1046, 107 S.Ct. 910, 93 L.Ed.2d 860 (1987).

. Penry v. State, 903 S.W.2d 715, 764 (Tex.Crim. App.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 116 S.Ct. 480, 133 L.Ed.2d 408 (1995).

. Curry v. State, 861 S.W.2d 479, 482 (Tex.App.— Fort Worth 1993, pet. ref'd).

. See Campbell v. State, 610 S.W.2d 754, 756 (Tex.Crim.App. [Panel Op.] 1980); Jones v. State, 725 S.W.2d 770, 772 (Tex.App. —Dallas 1987, pet. ref'd).