Court Opinion

ID: 9768299
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:55:00.16168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:36.364752
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
concurring in the result only.
“A Requiem Dedicated to the Kitty Ge-noveses of this Country”
It is now axiomatic that in the decade that commenced with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and concluded with the separation of Tiny Tim from Miss Vicky in 1972, but perhaps even until now, violence in this country and State proliferated.
One of the reasons that has been given for what to many of us was a strange and unjustifiable phenomenon in this country is that citizens of this country and State became reluctant or afraid to get “involved” in deterring that violence, and refused to intervene in good faith on behalf of another person. “This reticence seemed to emanate less from fear of physical harm than from the potential consequences of a legal aftermath.” Alexander v. State, 52 Md. App. 171, 447 A.2d 880 (Ct.Sp.App.1982). Judge Lowe, the author of that opinion, highlighted his statement with a reference to the well known case involving Katherine “Kitty” Genovese, whose screams and cries for help went unheard one night in New York City because persons in the neighborhood where she was assaulted and later murdered chose not to get involved, or intervene on Kitty’s behalf, but chose, instead, to pull their window shades, blinds, or curtains, and shut their windows and doors, in order not to see or hear the butchery that was then taking place. Why did those good persons not come forth to aid Kitty, a fellow human being, who was then being mauled by nothing less than a rabies-infected animal, who was then disguised as a human being? Later, when interviewed, those persons, who have since that night *566been ridiculed and held in contempt throughout this great country in which we are blessed to live, stated that they did not intervene on behalf of Kitty because they believed that the law would not protect them from possible criminal charges if they had intervened and assaulted Kitty’s wrongdoer and it was later found that they were wrong in what they thought and believed they saw and heard. Thus, it was their fear of legal consequences, and not necessarily their timidity or lack of bravery, that chilled their better instincts to intervene on behalf of Kitty!!! Do we want such thinking to exist in Texas? I, for one, do not.
I acknowledge that the facts of this case do not come close to those that existed in Kitty’s ease. However, I sincerely believe that if this Court places the duty to retreat upon a “good faith Samaritan,” who intervenes on behalf of another person in good faith and reasonable belief that the person in whose behalf he intervenes is in danger of being threatened with serious bodily injury or death as it obviously does in this cause, then we will see in the future “Kitty Genovese” type cases in this State, because our citizens and non-citizens will not intervene or get involved because of fear of the legal consequences of intervening or getting involved. Is this the kind of thinking that we want our citizens to have? I, for one, think not, and I sincerely believe that those persons who subscribe to total non-intervention, regardless of the facts and circumstances, should move to a place where such views are acceptable and in vogue. Cf. People v. Young, 11 N.Y.2d 274, 229 N.Y.S.2d 1, 183 N.E.2d 319 (Ct.App.1962), which held that a person who in good faith and reasonable belief goes to the aid of a third person does so at his own peril, which ruling apparently shocked the consciences of the then members of the New York Legislature to such an extent that they voted to change their law, causing a commentator to thereafter state that “if the Young case, supra, were to be litigated under the revised provision, [see McKinney’s Consolidated Laws of New York, § 35.15, “Practice Commentaries”], a different result would be required.” However, a careful reading of Section 35.15 leads me to conclude that the “Kitty Geno-veses” of New York City are not much better off today than when the real “Kitty” Ge-novese was murdered, but I will, as I must, leave the interpretation of that statute to the appellate jurists of New York State.
The question that is before this Court is not whether the appellant had the lawful right to intervene on behalf of Joan Goodwin, who was then engaged in a controversy with Rodney Johnson, the deceased, because all appear to agree that he did, but is, instead, whether the trial judge in this cause erred when he instructed the jury that after the appellant took the first step to intervene, if the jury found that a reasonable person under the same facts and circumstances would have retreated, and the appellant did not do so, then he should be found guilty.
The majority opinion correctly affirms the decision of the Tyler Court of Appeals of Hughes v. State, 721 S.W.2d 356 (Tex.App. — Tyler, 1985), which held that the trial court reversibly erred in instructing the jury that the appellant had the legal duty to retreat before he shot and killed Rodney Johnson when he was defending Joan Goodwin, the object of the controversy that existed in this cause, if a reasonable person would have then retreated.
The Tyler Court of Appeals rejected the State’s argument that a good faith inter-venor who comes to the aid of another person only stands in the shoes that that person wore, and, because Y.T.C.A., Penal Code, Section 9.32(2), requires that a person who is defending himself must, if a reasonable person would have thereafter retreated, retreat, the trial court’s instruction that the appellant had to retreat was a correct instruction on the law.
The Tyler Court of Appeals relied heavily upon the Waco Court of Appeals’ decision of Crawford v. State, 629 S.W.2d 165 (Tex.App. — Waco 1982, no P.D.R.). There, Justice Hall, speaking for that court, correctly *567observed that to approve such an instruction as was given in that cause, which appears to be identical to the one given in this cause, “would require one who perceives another under attack by unlawful force, and believes that his intervention is immediately necessary to prevent the attack, to simply walk away if he can reasonably do so without injury to himself and leave the victim to the whims of the assailant.” Justice Hall concluded for the Waco Court of Appeals: “This has never been the rule in Texas, and we hold that such rule was not intended by the Legislature by the reference in Penal Code article 9.33, supra, to articles 9.31 and 9.32. (167-168).”
I pause to point out that the instruction that was given in this cause and in Crawford, supra, did not come from Paul McClung’s work entitled Jury Charges for Texas Criminal Practice, which has long been “the Bible on jury instructions” in this State. McClung himself, as far back as his 1981 edition, expressly made it clear several times that in such a situation the trial judge should not “include a duty to retreat in this charge.” In fact, he was adamant about it: “Do not, REPEAT, do not include the duty to retreat in the charge on defense of a third person.” He subscribed to this view long before Crawford v. State, supra, was decided by the Waco Court of Appeals. In 1981, he stated the following: “It would be most inconsistent to give a person the right to defend a third person, but require him, as a reasonable man, to run away before defending the third person.” In 1985, he repeated this statement.
Judge Clinton concludes: “[0]ur present construction of § 9.33(1), supra, ‘applies’ the law of retreat only to the third person [the party on whose behalf the accused intervened], and then only in the sense that it requires the accused to make the reasonable assessment, from his standpoint, that a reasonable person in the third person’s shoes [the party on whose behalf the accused intervened] would not have retreated, before he may act with deadly force in that person’s behalf.”
The problem that I have with Judge Clinton’s conclusion is that he appears to somehow implicate into the scenario what the person on whose behalf the defendant intervened thought or believed. If that is what he means, then I must part company with the majority opinion because if that were the case there would have been no need for the Legislature to enact Section 9.33. Under Section 9.33, where the defendant has killed the deceased, the question is whether the defendant, as he perceived the situation, reasonably believed that it was necessary to use deadly force to prevent the person he perceived to be the assailant and wrongdoer imminently committing the offense of murder of the person on whose behalf he intervened. If the jury answers the question in the affirmative, then that ends the discussion, and the defendant is entitled to be found not guilty; if the jury does not so find, or does not have a reasonable doubt on the issue, then, as far as the defense of a third person goes, that defense just went out the window as far as the defendant is concerned.
To understand what the Legislature intended when it enacted Section 9.33, supra, it is necessary to revisit the common law.
At common law, the right of intervention by a third party was limited to the protection of those closely related to, or associated with, the intervenor. That restriction to family or close relatives evolved not from the common law right of self-defense, as most cases imply, but from “the primary law of nature,” one right which flowed therefrom was the right to protect one’s own property, i.e., his household, which included his wife, servants, etc. See Alexander v. State, supra, and the authorities cited therein, 447 A.2d at page 882.
The failure to recognize the distinction between the common-law right of self-defense and the common-law right of intervention by other than a stranger has caused many courts throughout this nation to adopt the rule that no deadly force could be justifiably employed by a person who intervened on behalf of another unless and until that person was himself justified in *568using deadly force against the person he believed was the aggressor; thus, the majority rule that one who goes to the aid of another person obtains no greater rights than the person into whose shoes he then stepped. See Young v. State, supra. However, those jurisdictions that adopted the minority rule, that one who intervenes in a struggle between strangers under the mistaken but reasonable belief that he is protecting the person who he assumes or reasonably believes is being unlawfully threatened with death or serious bodily injury is thereby exonerated from liability, overlooked the distinction between an inter-venor who was a stranger and an inter-venor who was a member of “the family.” This unfortunately appears to have once been the view in Texas, where the Legislature appears to have attempted to place into our law some of both the common-law right of intervention and the common-law right of self-defense. See Arts. 1142 and 1226, 1925 Penal Code. In Art. 1142(6), supra, it was provided: “Violence used to the person does not amount to an assault and battery in the following cases: 6. In self defense, or in defense of another against unlawful violence offered to his person or property.” (My emphasis). When the Legislature enacted Section 9.33, supra, however, it did not carry over into the statute the phrase “In self defense.” By its wording, it not only gave a stranger the right to intervene, but the right to kill as well.
A clear reading of Section 9.33 should make it obvious to anyone that in giving a stranger the right to defend a third person, the Legislature’s focus of attention was on the right to intervene, and what right the intervenor thereafter had, and not on the right of self-defense. Thus, it did not concern itself in such instance with the requirement of retreat, which it could have easily done had it chosen to do so, see Section 35.15, New York Penal Code, supra, but contrary to the provisions of Art. 1142, supra, it chose not to even mention the law of self-defense in Section 9.33. It thus sought not to penalize the Good Samaritan who gambles through intervention not only his health and life but his freedom and reputation as well, i.e., the Legislature did not require that the Good Samaritan had to make a split second decision on whether or not to retreat if his original justification in intervening was done in good faith and as he perceived the situation he killed the deceased because he reasonably believed that such was necessary to prevent the deceased from killing the person on whose behalf he intervened. Thus, it did not intend to impose a legal duty to retreat on such persons because such a duty would annul the justification for the intervention in the first place. In short, our Legislature did not want any such cases as the one involving “Kitty” Ge-novese to ever occur in this State. The law of retreat, as found in our law of self-defense, see Section 9.32, supra, is simply not a part of Section 9.33, supra. Section 9.33, supra, was clearly intended “to encourage and to afford protection to ‘good Samaritans’ by removing their legal doubts, which might impede crime prevention and deter those who witness violent assaults upon persons, but who otherwise would aid an apparent victim of criminal violence.” Alexander, supra, 447 A.2d at page 884.
Thus, in this cause, the appellant’s right to intervene and thereafter kill Johnson was not tied to Goodwin, but rather depended upon what caused or motivated him to intervene on Goodwin’s behalf in the first place, and whether he thereafter reasonably believed that it was necessary to kill Johnson to prevent Johnson from killing Goodwin. The instruction by the trial judge in this cause, on the duty to retreat, for all practical purposes, sealed the appellant’s fate, regardless of whether he reasonably viewed the situation, and then believed it was necessary to kill Johnson, and regardless of whether or not the jury might have believed that he was then and there acting in the capacity of a “Good Faith Samaritan.” The trial judge clearly erred in giving the instruction that he did.
In light of this Court’s majority opinion of Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157 (Tex.Cr.App.1984), should this Court remand the *569cause to the court of appeals for it to consider and decide whether or not the erroneous instruction to the jury constituted “some” harm to the appellant? I do not think so because to do so would simply be engaging in appellate “ping-pong” justice, which I find is despicable. The ultimate responsibility of deciding whether or not there was “some” harm done the appellant rests with this Court now, and not later. Given the facts and circumstances of this case, it should be readily and easily seen, even by those persons who might be classified or characterized as being myopic, that “some” harm was done the appellant by the erroneous instruction that was given the jury in this cause. Nothing would be accomplished, except delay, in remanding the cause to the court of appeals.
For the above reasons, I only concur.