Court Opinion

ID: 9767481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:20:23.439654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:31.405660
License: Public Domain

DUNCAN, Judge,
concurring.
Relative to point of error number eight, the majority concludes that the last sentence in Article 37.071(a), V.A.C.C.P., authorizes a defendant to argue the deterrent effect of the death penalty only within the confines of the case on trial. Implicit within that conclusion is the determination that the statutory authorization that the “state and the defendant or his counsel shall be permitted to present argument for or against the sentence of death,” id., does nothing more than grant to the State and the defendant a right they already possessed: the right to argue, on the State’s part, that by invoking the death penalty others will be deterred from committing similar crimes; on the defendant’s part, the right to argue others would not be so deterred. For example, in Cañedo v. State, 134 Tex.Crim. 80, 113 S.W.2d 902 (1938), this Court stated:
We can see no error in the complained of remarks of the State’s attorney relative to letting the punishment in this cause be severe enough in order to deter others from committing like offenses. Such is the purpose of the Penal Code and its enactments. Article 2 of the Penal Code says: ‘The object of punishment is to suppress crime and reform the offender.’
Id., at 904.
Similarly, in May v. State, 151 Tex.Crim. 534, 209 S.W.2d 606 (1948), the Court stated: “The district attorney was well within his rights in arguing to the jury that punishment should be such as to deter others from committing similar offenses.” Id., at 607.
It cannot be seriously argued that a defendant does not have an absolute right to make the converse argument. Thus, it is obvious to me that when it included the last sentence in Article 37.071(a) the Legislature intended to provide both the State and the defendant with the right to argue something beyond that which they already possessed. That is, the right to argue the propriety or impropriety of the death penalty in general — including the argument that the death penalty is appropriate and necessary because it is a deterrent or that it is not.
The majority opinion will surely be cited properly as authority to contest the State from arguing that the death penalty is a necessary part of our criminal justice system. Conversely, it will also be equally cited to contest the defendant arguing that it is not. This is unfortunate because each argument is appropriate to death penalty cases and renders the legislative authority to make such an argument statutory superfluity.
Even though I think restricting the appellant’s argument was error, I also think the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Rule 81(b)(2), Tex.R.App.Pro. Therefore, I concur.
DAVIS and MILLER, JJ., join.