Court Opinion

ID: 9641662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:37:23.213799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.007278
License: Public Domain

WOODLEY, Judge,
dissenting.
The amended motion for new trial alleged that the newspaper article appeared after the jurors had been examined on voir dire and some of those taken on the jury the next morning read it; and that after the jury had retired to deliberate one juror asked the others if they had read the article “in the paper last night” and several answered in the affirmative.
The trial court properly held that, assuming such allegations to be true, a new trial would not be called for.
At most the allegations of the motion for new trial and the juror’s affidavit show a casual reference to the existence of the article, not its contents.
A mere casual reference to improper matters in the jury *661room is not ground for reversal. Greenwood v. State, 157 Texas Cr. Rep. 58, 246 S.W. 2d 191.
There is no allegation that the question regarding the newspaper article was asked during the jury’s deliberations and before the verdict had been agreed upon. Branch’s Ann. P.C., 2d Ed., Sec. 586. Even so, no juror is shown to have heard anything from the other members of the jury that he did not know prior to being sworn as a juror. Glass v. State, 143 Texas Cr. Rep. 88, 157 S.W. 2d 399; Garver v. State, 158 Texas Cr. Rep. 585, 258 S.W. 2d 812.
The reading of newspaper articles by members of the panel before they are sworn as jurors would not alone disqualify them as jurors or constitute ground for challenge, even if they had formed an opinion therefrom. Art. 616(13) V.A.C.C.P.; Willis v. State, 128 Texas Cr. Rep. 504, 81 S.W. 2d 693.
It was not alleged that any juror served on the case who was not fair, impartial and unprejudiced or that any of them had, from reading the newspaper article or otherwise, formed an opinion as to appellant’s guilt or innocence which would or did influence them in arriving at a verdict.