Court Opinion

ID: 9766973
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:05:10.287656+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:27.457035
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON APPELLANT’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
W.C. DAVIS, Judge.
On original submission appellant’s conviction for murder was affirmed. We held the trial judge was justified in ordering a mistrial due to “manifest necessity” after he had erroneously overruled appellant’s motion to shuffle the names of the jury panel and proceeded to select a jury, empanel and swear them. In his motion for rehearing appellant now agrees that “[i]f automatic reversal would have followed a conviction the trial court was empowered under the doctrine of ‘manifest necessity’ to order a mistrial upon its own motion and over Appellant’s objection.” However, he contends that his motion to shuffle was not timely filed so no automatic reversal would have followed the overruling of the motion. Thus, he argues, the ordering of a mistrial was not a “manifest necessity.”
The record reflects that a panel of prospective jurors was seated and exemptions and qualifications were inquired of by the trial judge. A list of the remaining panel members was drawn up and shuffled upon order of the court. Appellant then made his motion to shuffle.1 The trial judge denied the motion. Subsequently, a jury was selected and sworn by the court.
Appellant’s motion to shuffle, made after the court had qualified the members of the jury panel, was timely. Yanez v. State, 677 S.W.2d 62 (1984); Art. 35.11, V.A.C.C.P.
For purposes of Art. 35.11, supra, we hold that the voir dire examination of the jury panel does not commence until all of the members of the jury panel have been shown to be qualified to serve as jurors in the cause and are seated in the courtroom. After it has been determined by the trial judge which persons will make up the jury panel from which will come the jury that will hear the case, and those persons have been seated in the courtroom, if the accused person then makes a motion, either orally or in writing, for a shuffle of the names of the members of the jury panel, such motion will be deemed to have been timely made.
Yanez, supra, at 69.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is denied.

. An accused is entitled to a shuffle, if timely requested, regardless of a trial’s judge’s sua sponte shuffle. Wilkerson v. State, 681 S.W.2d 29 (Tex.Cr.App.1984); see also Stark v. State, 657 S.W.2d 115 (Tex.Cr.App.1983); Smith v. State, 648 S.W.2d 695 (Tex.Cr.App.1983); Davis v. State, 573 S.W.2d 780 (Tex.Cr.App.1978).