Court Opinion

ID: 9771781
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:53:11.9636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:36.615519
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
This case illustrates the cumulative effect of trial counsel’s following errors to be tantamount to ineffective assistance of counsel, within the meaning of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 686, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2063, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), so “that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result”:
(1) failure to represent appellant adequately in the voir dire proceedings, particularly in the elimination of potentially biased jurors;
(2) failure to object to the extraneous information of highly prejudicial nature contained in the judgment of a previous conviction introduced at the punishment phase of the trial; and
(3) failure to object to the prosecutor’s punishment phase argument suggesting that defense counsel promote lies.
Each of these failures — and there were some four errors specified — was exhaustively researched and documented by appellant’s skillful appellate counsel. Their total effect, in my judgment, demonstrated that trial counsel, through his passivity, did not prepare or conduct a defense reasonably consistent with minimal professional standards of the criminal bar. See Gomez v. State, 704 S.W.2d 770 (Tex.Crim.App. 1985); Ex parte Duffy, 607 S.W.2d 507 (Tex.Crim.App.1980); Boyde v. State, 513 S.W.2d 588 (Tex.Crim.App.1974).
It may be true, which I doubt, that each of these errors, standing alone, would not be so egregious as to require a reversal, but I am reminded of Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s conclusion in Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U.S. 191, 199, 77 S.Ct. 281, 285, 1 L.Ed.2d 246 (1957):
No single one of these circumstances alone would in my opinion justify a reversal. I cannot escape the conclusion, however, that in combination they bring the result below the Plimsoll line of “due process.”
Likewise, I cannot escape the conclusion that the result of the trial counsel’s relative inaction throughout the proceedings was to deny the appellant a fair and impartial trial.
Accordingly, I would reverse and remand for a new trial, in the belief that appellant was entitled to be tried in accordance with the protection of the “assistance of counsel” guarantee of the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution (and Art. I, sections 10 and 19 of the Texas Constitution).