Court Opinion

ID: 9762438
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:23:40.403448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:34.381396
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
“The evil to be avoided is the consideration by the jury of parole in assessing punishment.” Rose v. State, 752 S.W.2d 529, at 535 (Tex.Cr.App.1987-1988), quoting Clark v. State, 643 S.W.2d 723, 725 (Tex.Cr.App.1982).
In Arnold v. State, 786 S.W.2d 295 (Tex.Cr.App.1990), after reprising our analysis of the § 4 instruction in Rose, supra, at 535, we translated the first part of its fifth paragraph, viz:
“That is to say, when it comes to assess punishment the jury may deliberate on the content of what the trial court has just explained in the preceding four paragraphs in making its decision as to the number of years it will assess as punishment.”
Id., at 299. In the instant cause the jury did just that.
The judge had read to the jury the charge on punishment including § 4. Then jurors “selected a foreman, the charge was read and the jury deliberated.” State’s *261Brief, at 4. As juror Cynthia May testified, “I guess what it boiled down to was we were taking into consideration a third of the sentence....” Because “no mention of parole law was made during voir dire or final arguments,” majority opinion, at 258 n. 2, the only source of the “one-third” rule alluded to by May is the § 4 instruction.
The § 4 instruction thus formed the very foundation for their deliberations and enabled them to figure how to compensate for the possibility of parole by assessing a long term of years. That they believed ninety-nine years would compensate more than life is beside the point.