Court Opinion

ID: 9772618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:24:02.467854+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:43:12.325685
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in this cause, but write separately to add a qualification to its treatment of appellant’s eleventh point of error. The Court’s opinion frames the issue as whether the “effective dates of statutes are absolute requirements.” Op. at p. 316. I believe this to be a subtle but significant distortion of the true issue in this cause.
What statutory provision controls at any given time is simply a matter of statutory construction. By its terms, the 1991 legislative amendment to Article 37.071 was made to apply only to offenses committed after its September 1, 1991 effective date. See Acts 1991, eh. 838, § 5, p. 2901, eff. Sept. 1, 1991. For any capital offense committed before September 1, 1991, the law at the time of appellant’s trial required an affirmative finding of “deliberateness” by the jury before the trial court was authorized to sentence the accused to death.* Under Article 1.14(a), V.A.C.C.P., a capital accused against whom the State seeks imposition of the death penalty is not permitted by the system to waive a jury trial. I take this to mean that a jury finding on every issue the law assigns the jury to decide is an absolute feature of the system, not optional with the parties. Marin v. State, 851 S.W.2d 275 (Tex.Cr.App.1993). That appellant himself requested to be tried under the new punishment regime, therefore, cannot serve as either a forfeiture or even an express waiver of the requirement that a finding of deliberateness be made prerequisite to a lawful sentence of death. The law applicable to this appellant simply prohibits a judgment that includes a sentence of death in the absence of a jury finding of “deliberateness,” and the trial court erred to enter such a judgment. Such error need not be preserved for appeal. Marin v. State, supra.

 Appellant was tried in November of 1991, and thus, former Article 37.071, V.A.C.C.P., was the controlling punishment provision. Had appellant been tried after August 30, 1993, however, Article 37.0711, V.A.C.C.P., would apply. Under either provision, the trial court was not authorized to sentence appellant to death sans an affirmative finding of "deliberateness.”