Court Opinion

ID: 9858439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:23:43.410994+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:22.930284
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
I write separately to supplement the majority’s treatment of appellant’s twenty-third point of error. Appellant claims the trial court erred to grant the State’s challenge for cause against venireman Timothy Brewer. Brewer was a Methodist minister who did not believe that death could be an appropriate punishment under any circumstances, even going so far as to opine that if Adolph Hitler himself were on trial, he could not impose the death penalty. The law was adequately explained to Brewer and he persisted in asserting that “there are always mitigating circumstances in the nature of life.” The State did not articulate any grounds for its challenge for cause, but under the circumstances we may presume “the specific grounds were ... apparent from the context.” Tex.R.App.Pro., Rule 52(a). The trial court could fairly have concluded from Brewer’s responses that he would always answer the second special issue under current Arti-*535ele 37.071, § 2(e) affirmatively on the basis of considerations having no possible bearing on “the defendant’s moral blameworthiness.” Id., § 2(f)(4).
We have elsewhere suggested that:
“categorical opposition to the death penalty can support a trial court’s conclusion that a venireman is ‘substantially impaired’ under Wainwright v. Witt, [469 U.S. 412, 105 S.Ct. 844, 83 L.Ed.2d 841 (1985) ], at least if that opposition would cause the venireman invariably to answer the special issue required to be submitted by subsection [2](e) [of current Article 37.071] in such a way as to prevent imposition of the death penalty. Cf. Staley v. State, 887 S.W.2d 885 (Tex.Cr.App.1994) (venireman who maintained his categorical opposition to death penalty would cause him invariably to answer jury nullification instruction in satisfaction of Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), in such a way as to prohibit imposition of death sentence was properly subject to State’s challenge for cause).
Riley v. State, 889 S.W.2d 290, at 301, n. 4 (Tex.Cr.App.1994) (Opinion on State’s motion for rehearing). It was within the trial court’s discretion, given the voir dire set out in the majority opinion at 528-529, to conclude Brewer was such a venireman.
The only problem is that current Article 37.071 was not the law applicable to the trial of this offense. Otherwise we would not be vacating appellant’s death sentence and remanding the cause for a new punishment hearing on authority of Powell v. State, 897 S.W.2d 307 (Tex.Cr.App.1994). It is a bit of an anomaly, though not noted by the majority, that venireman Brewer should have been excluded for cause on .the basis of an inability to follow a phase of the law that manifestly does not apply — or at least should not have been applied — in this cause.
Nevertheless, Brewer proved himself to be challengeable on a related basis that was applicable to this cause. The statutory mitigation instruction clearly did not apply here, since the offense was committed in 1988. But even before the advent of current Article 37.071, § 2(e), a capital defendant might have been entitled under the Eighth Amendment to a mitigation instruction, either in the form of a non-statutory special issue or a nullification instruction. State v. McPherson, 851 S.W.2d 846 (Tex.Cr.App.1992). Whether or not the defendant was entitled to the instruction depended upon whether evidence was presented in mitigation having no relevance to the former statutory special issues. Id., at 850. Of course, there was no way for the parties to tell during voir dire whether a mitigation instruction of some kind would have been required under Penry v. Lynaugh, supra. It is only after all the evidence has been presented at the punishment phase that the trial court can determine whether a Pen-ry instruction is necessary. Given that uncertainty, the State is entitled to a juror who would not use a Penry instruction, should one be submitted, as a way to vindicate his categorical opposition to the death penalty. Staley v. State, supra. The trial court might well have concluded Brewer was challengea-ble for cause on this basis. This is sufficiently similar in principle to the basis upon which the trial court apparently did grant the challenge for cause that I am willing to agree there was no error.
For this reason I agree that appellant’s twenty-third point of error should be overruled. I otherwise concur in the Court’s judgment.