Court Opinion

ID: 9684846
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:16:28.06463+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:00.453163
License: Public Domain

OVERSTREET, Judge,
dissents.
The court’s charge to the jury at the conclusion of evidence is the only law which jurors are to apply in reaching their decision. The application paragraph is that part of the court’s charge that authorizes the jury to convict. In the ease before us, it is undisputed that the application part of the court’s charge did not authorize the jury to convict appellant as a party.
Simply put, the question is whether a parties charge must be included in the application paragraph of the court’s charge to the jury before a conviction on that theory is authorized? The State’s petition asks, in essence, is it error for the prosecutor to argue for a conviction based on a theory not in the application paragraph but contained in the abstract portion of the charge?1 Con*609trary to the majority, I answer “yes” to both propositions.
Because the majority reverses the court of appeals and once again provides cover for another trial judge to the detriment of the law and a citizen accused, I dissent.2
The disposition of this case should be decided on the issue of whether the State, over the objection of appellant, engaged in improper argument.3 To answer this question, the majority would take us on a journey backwards to the good ole days of 1952 and Daywood v. State, 157 Tex.Crim. 266, 248 S.W.2d 479 (1952). A journey that starts with a grand ole quote, but nevertheless the wrong road. Oh!, the quote,
Error in argument does not lie in going beyond the court’s charge, but lies in stating law contrary to the same.
Daywood, 248 S.W.2d at 484. But what about the rest of the story, when this Court held, “We do not find such here.” Id.
The majority, riding Daywood, supra, states, “That is, there is no error in correctly arguing the law, even if the law is not included in the court’s charge. Thus, a claim that the prosecutor argued beyond the charge cannot, in and of itself, constitute improper jury argument.” Renteria v. State, 977 S.W.2d 606, 608 (Tex.Cr.App.).
What the majority fails to realize and reveal is that the discussion of the law of parties was attached to arguments concerning two of the witnesses being accomplices as a matter of law and two of them being to be determined by the jury as accomplices as a matter of fact. In the context of the jury charge itself, and revealed by the discussions of the litigants, the jury charge contained the law of parties in an attempt to help the jury to decide if witnesses Chris Galindo and Cesar Udave were accomplices in fact. See Renteria v. State, No. 08-95-00155-CR (Tex. App. — -El Paso 1997) and the trial record.
The law of parties in the court’s charge was never given in connection with appellant. To read it as such is gross error. In fact, the only mention of appellant being a party to the offense came from the mouth of the prosecutor in argument, over the objection of appellant. At all times, appellant was prosecuted as a principal actor.
The majority’s logic in order to reach the desired result can be read to mean that the court’s charge is utterly useless and/or unnecessary because the parties are not bound by it and the jury can be guided by the law argued by lawyers so long as it is correct. The question then becomes why isn’t the correct law in the charge? The answer is simple; the judge didn’t include it. Appellant did not and should not have objected to its absence because of the State’s theory during trial when it presented evidence to support the indictment allegation that appellant was guilty as a primary actor and not as a party.
The majority stiff-arms the court of appeals, kicks sand in the eye of stare decisis, and now authorizes the government to convict a citizen accused by allowing the government’s lawyer to blatantly argue to lay citizen jurors to convict on a theory of law not contained in the application part of the court’s charge to the jury. To these strong-arm tactics and the opinion of the majority, I dissent.
BAIRD, J., joins.

. The State Prosecuting Attorney's question upon which we granted review asks:
*609Where a parties instruction is set forth in the abstract portion of the charge but not in the application paragraph, is it improper for the prosecutor to argue that the jury can convict the defendant as a party?

. If the trial judge believed that the law of parties applied to the case, he should have included it in the application paragraph which authorizes a juty to convict. Campbell v. State, 910 S.W.2d 475, 477 (Tex.Cr.App.1995), cert. denied, U.S. 1140, 116 S.Ct. 1430, 134 L.Ed.2d (1996).

. It is clear from the record and undisputed by the parties that the application paragraph of the court’s charge to the jury did not authorize the jury to convict appellant as a party for the offense of murder.