Court Opinion

ID: 9766498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:51:25.923102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:23.376345
License: Public Domain

HOWELL, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. This Court is required to follow the decisions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Although the majority has given lip service to the principle, it has turned aside from that principle on the basis of a footnote in a panel opinion. It is not our function to surmise whether or not a decision of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has been overruled. That court is well able to tell us in due season.
This case is controlled by the Bothwell line of cases. Bothwell v. State, 500 S.W.2d 128 (Tex.Crim.App.1973). This writer does not believe that a panel of the Court of Criminal Appeals either could or would undertake to overrule an established line of decisions of that court. Most certainly, the panel decision in Curtis v. State, 640 S.W.2d 615 (Tex.Crim.App.1982) did not undertake to overrule Bothwell. The most that Curtis attempted to do was carve out an exception to Bothwell. The conclusion that Bothwell has been overruled comes not from the Curtis court but from a panel majority in th;s court of appeals.
Curtis undertook to distinguish Both-well on the basis of the innocuousness of the remark and the defendant’s failure to object. The appellant before us did object, the objection was sustained, the jury was instructed to disregard and appellant’s motion for mistrial was overruled. Curtis is not comparable.
Neither can the error be dismissed as harmless. Our record shows a crime of violence, and a conviction therefor would warrant stern punishment. However, the facts would not necessarily call for maximum punishment considering that there is no evidence of deliberate plotting and no evidence of any motive for personal gain through commission of this ultimate crime, only the inexplicable eruption of violence.
Nor does the appellant’s prior record cry out of a “maximum” sentence. Appellant’s prior criminal history shows repeated marijuana possession convictions and nothing further — no crimes of violence. In specific testimony as to a bad reputation, which might refer to nothing more than the marijuana convictions, adds little justification for a seventy-five year sentence.
As a practical matter, appellant did receive a maximum sentence, or very close to the equivalent. Seventy-five years is well beyond the life expectency of this adult male. The sentence could have been life or it could have been ninety-nine years, but what difference? Any distinction between the sentence received and the maximum permissible is small indeed. The case in hand does not fit the Curtis exception. Bothwell controls.
The majority has further overlooked the prophylactic principles underlying such cases as Bothwell. Those who would exercise misplaced zeal in the high calling to represent the State of Texas before the bar of justice cannot be adequately restrained by the issuance of harmless error affir-mances. At a minimum, the State, having erred, and unnecessarily so, should be burdened to strictly demonstrate that the error was indeed harmless. This, it cannot do.
I would further reverse on the basis of cumulative error. As well indicated by the majority opinion, the State exceeded the *619bounds of proper argument not once, but again and again. While the trial court sustained repeated objections and repeatedly admonished the jury to disregard, the likelihood that the jury would do so was successively diminished. This defendant’s right to a fundamentally fair trial was violated. He must be tried again.