Court Opinion

ID: 9863150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 03:08:16.216109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:47:44.402904
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
Notwithstanding the acknowledged determination by the court of appeals that what the trial court allowed here is not authorized by Article 38.071, V.A.C.C.P., Gonzales v. State, 784 S.W.2d 723, at 728 (Tex.App.— San Antonio 1990), or for that matter any other extant legislative enactment, the majority “see[s] no reason why an expression of this important public policy must necessarily be in the form of an act or statute.” Further, it finds “nothing in any pertinent opinion from this Court or from the Supreme Court that would permit only the Legislature to make this ‘public policy’ determination on behalf of the State.” At 765. Accordingly, contrary to conventional wisdom that judges shall not make public policy through “judicial legislation,” but merely construe laws already made by traditional policy makers, the majority causes this Court to put its imprimatur on an otherwise unauthorized, if not unconstitutional, procedural law sanctioned by the trial court in this cause. Id., at 766.1
That this Court is empowered to prescribe public policy does not mean it must exercise that power as a matter of course. Whether a court will judicially legislate its way to a solution to a particular problem in a given situation is an internal policy question. Here, all germane considerations counsel for judicial restraint.
In his opinion for the San Antonio Court of Appeals, former Presiding Judge Onion pointed out the problem, viz:
“In the instant case we are dealing with a witness, a child witness, in a murder case. There is no statute declaring a public policy regarding the situation, nor any legislative finding of necessity. The State, however, relies exclusively upon TEX.CODE CRIM.PROC.ANN. art. 38.-071 [Testimony of Child Who is Victim of Offense] to carve out an exception to the right of confrontation under the circumstances presented.”
Gonzales v. State, supra, at 727. Reviewing the history of legislative development of the present statute, Judge Onion concludes:
“... Neither version [of the statute], however, is applicable in murder cases nor to any witness except the child against whom the offense was committed. So on both scores the statute is inapplicable to the instant offense, and cannot operate as an exception to the *770constitutional core right of confrontation in the instant case.”
Id., at 728.
The Maryland statute as construed in Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. —, 110 S.Ct. 3157, 111 L.Ed.2d 666 (1990), is similarly restricted to “child abuse victims.” See majority at 761.
In his motion for rehearing to the San Antonio Court of Appeals the district attorney characterized his effort as “prosecuto-rial innovation,” and during oral argument his assistant district attorney submitted that it was simply an extension of the existing statute under the Constitution. With deference, this Court should be guided more by public policy findings of the Legislature than by singlehanded experimental efforts by the prosecutorial element in the criminal justice system.
For those reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. The majority thus demonstrates that bit of "conventional wisdom” is, and in my view has long been, no more than amiable fiction. See Clinton, Examining The Appellate Judicial Function, Tlie Republic Star, July 1990, at 6. Of course, judges and courts are lawmakers and lawgivers! See Aldisert, The Judicial Process, Chapter I: Anatomy of Judge-Made Law, Section 3: The Judge as Lawmaker, p. 88 ff. (American Casebook Series, West Publishing Company 1978). The majority opinion proves the proposition.