Court Opinion

ID: 9774993
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:40:27.998706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:18.608541
License: Public Domain

CAMPBELL, Judge,
concurring.
After personally reviewing and comparing the record of Cook’s trial with the record in Satterwhite v. Texas, 486 U.S. 249, 108 S.Ct. 1792, 100 L.Ed.2d 284 (1988), I concur that this case cannot be distinguished in any meaningful sense. I write, however, to emphasize (1) that the United States Supreme Court’s harmless error analysis in Satterwhite is not consistent with the analyses in its prior cases that have never been overruled and (2) that the outcome in the instant case would be different under the analyses in those prior cases.
As we noted in Harris v. State, 790 S.W.2d 568, 586 (Tex.Cr.App.1989), "[t]he United States Supreme Court has been ... evasive ... when it comes to establishing any coherent standard to judge harmless [federal constitutional] error.” The simple truth is that the Supreme Court has been inconsistent and has alternately embraced and rejected the “overwhelming evidence” and “cumulative evidence” tests for determining when such constitutional error is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. See 3 LaPave & Israel, Criminal Procedure § 26.6(e) (1984 & Supp.1991); Field, Assessing the Harmlessness of Federal Constitutional Error, 125 U.Penn.L.Rev, 15, 16 (1976);1 1 Weinstein & Berger, Weinstein’s Evidence § 103[08] (1991); Comment, Harmless Constitutional Error, 33 Baylor L.Rev. 961 (1981).
In Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), the Court held that a federal constitutional error should be considered harmless if the prosecution can “prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” The Court stated also that, with regard to evidentiary errors, “[a]n error in admitting plainly relevant evidence which possibly influenced the jury adversely to a litigant cannot ... be conceived of as harmless.” This holding plainly created a strict standard that looked not to whether the jury could have convicted without the error, or whether the appellate court would have affirmed without the error, but to whether the error might have influenced the jury in reaching its verdict. In other words, under Chapman, a constitutional error could not be considered harmless if there was a reasonable possibility that the error, either alone or in context, moved the jury from a state of nonpersuasion to one of persuasion beyond a reasonable doubt as to the issue in question.
The decision in Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969), marked the next step in the progression of the harmless error doctrine. *606In that case, the Court, purporting to rely on Chapman, held harmless two erroneously admitted statements of Harrington’s co-defendants that placed Harrington at the scene of the crime. The Court held the statements harmless because Harrington’s own statement and other evidence properly admitted also placed him at the crime scene. It is uncertain whether the Supreme Court was attempting to establish an overwhelming evidence test or a cumulative evidence test.2 See Field, supra, 125 U.Penn.L.Rev. at 38-39.
This approach continued in Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U.S. 371 [92 S.Ct. 2174, 33 L.Ed.2d 1] (1972), and Schneble v. Florida, 405 U.S. 427 [92 S.Ct. 1056, 31 L.Ed.2d 340] (1972). In both cases the Supreme Court again claimed that the errors were harmless, despite Chapman, by noting that there was overwhelming evidence of guilt. Recently, in Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673 [106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674] (1986), in extending the harmless error rule to a violation of one's Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine a witness, the Supreme Court, at least implicitly, applied an overwhelming evidence standard to the error. Similarly, in Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570 [106 S.Ct. 3101, 92 L.Ed.2d 460] (1986), the Court cited the overwhelming evidence of guilt in determining that improper jury instructions that incorrectly shift the burden of proof to the defendant was an error subject to a harmless error analysis.
Harris, 790 S.W.2d at 586.
In Satterwhite, however, the Court, without explanation, signalled a clear break with the overwhelming evidence and cumulative evidence tests it had previously utilized and returned to the strict position announced in Chapman. This shift may indicate that the Court, in applying the harmless error test, will no longer focus primarily on the reliability of the outcome of a criminal proceeding — or it may indicate that the Court has accepted the arguments made by the critics of the overwhelming evidence and cumulative evidence tests.3 See, e.g., Harris, 790 S.W.2d at 600-604 (Clinton, J., dissenting); Field, supra, 125 U.Penn.L.Rev. at 32-36 & 41-47.
The Chapman formulation of harmless error prevailed again in Arizona v. Fulminante, — U.S.-, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991). There, the Court held that the defendant’s coerced confession, although cumulative of a second (lawfully admitted) confession, was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because, under the facts of the case, “the jury’s assessment of the [lawfully admitted] confession could easily have depended in large part on the presence of the [coerced] confession.” Fulminante, 111 S.Ct. at 1258.4
In short, the continued vitality of the overwhelming evidence and cumulative evidence tests is in grave doubt, although the cases utilizing those tests have never been explicitly overruled. Were either test still available, it would be appropriate for this Court to affirm Cook’s conviction; that is, the untainted evidence considered by the jury at the punishment stage of Cook’s trial was both “overwhelming” and “cumulative”, as the Supreme Court has previously used those terms. The evidence showed, first of all, that Cook committed a crime of unspeakable horror, that his reputation for being peaceful and law-abiding was universally bad, and that he had a criminal record. That evidence, coupled with the untainted testimony of the psychologist *607that Cook was a severe sociopath impossible to rehabilitate, would have amply satisfied either the overwhelming evidence test or the cumulative evidence test.
One can only speculate that the Supreme Court was attempting, in Satterwhite, to find some middle ground upon which to balance the truth-finding function of a criminal trial with the Court’s responsibility to protect the integrity of the process that led to Satterwhite’s conviction and sentence. With this noble pursuit, I have no disagreement. However, because of the inconsistency and uncertainty that this pursuit has left in its wake, I and other appellate judges across this country can only be confused and dismayed.
With these comments, I join in the judgment of the Court.
McCORMICK, P.J., joins this opinion.

. Professor Field's analysis of harmless error is perhaps the most comprehensive and persuasive presently available.

. “While some writers have identified the rule adopted by the majority opinion in Harrington as a cumulative evidence test, a majority of the Court clearly examined the untainted evidence in the case and found it to be overwhelming." Campbell, An Economic View of Developments in the Harmless Error and Exclusionary Rules, 42 Baylor L.Rev. 499, 509 (1990).

. “Alternatively, the Satterwhite decision may be more of an aberrational response to an evi-dentiary area of the law that the Court finds particularly offensive — psychiatric testimony concerning future conduct." Campbell, supra, 42 Baylor L.Rev. at 524.

.Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by Justices O’Connor and Scalia, would have held the erroneously admitted confession to be “a classic case of harmless error.” Ill S.Ct. at 1266. This expression obviously represents continued clinging by three justices to some form of overwhelming evidence or cumulative evidence test.