Court Opinion

ID: 9777832
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:25:35.07948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:01.982358
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
concurring.
The long and short of what occurred in the appeal of this cause is that the El Paso Court of Appeals erred when it chose to make the independent determination that the trial judge should not have instructed the jury that Margaret Wilson was an accomplice witness as a matter of law. The record reflects that the charge that was given was given without objection from either the prosecuting attorney or the appellant or his counsel. Furthermore, the trial judge’s instruction was a correctly worded statement of the law.
Other than when complaint is made in the trial court and on appeal that the trial court should not have given an instruction to the jury, or when the claim is made that an instruction to the jury was fundamentally defective, I have yet to find any legal authority which supports the proposition that an appellate court is permitted to review the record in order to make the independent determination whether the trial court erred when it gave an unobjected to and correctly worded and phrased instruction to the jury.
I believe that when an unobjected to and correctly worded and phrased instruction has been given by the trial judge to the jury, an appellate court should not concern itself with the merits of whether the charge that was given should have been given. In that instance, I will always defer to the judgment of the trial judge. Where the issue of sufficiency is raised, the case should be viewed by an appellate court from the standpoint of the instruction that was given, and not whether the trial judge erred in giving the unobjected to instruction.
Therefore, the question that was before the court of appeals was not, as it framed it, “[Wjhether Miss Wilson could be prosecuted as a party to the burglary,” but, instead, because the trial judge instructed the jury that she was an accomplice witness as a matter of law, was “[Wjhether the evidence was sufficient to corroborate her testimony.”
Notwithstanding the error by the court of appeals, the majority of this Court has correctly decided the case. I therefore concur in its decision.