Court Opinion

ID: 9674760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:34:54.430801+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:29.625382
License: Public Domain

ODOM, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the decision that relief must be granted in this case. I write to point out additional evidence of the legislative intent on the issue in this case, and to call the attention of the legislature to the need for corrective legislation on the matter.
Ex parte Dowden, 580 S.W.2d 364, which controls our decision today, was decided by relying on the express statutory mandate of Art. 1.14, V.A.C.C.P., which provides:
“The defendant in a criminal prosecution for any offense may waive any rights secured him by law except the right of trial by jury in a capital felony case.”
This statute was applied to V.T.C.A., Penal Code Secs. 19.03 and 12.31, in reasoning that need not be repeated here.
An additional and perhaps stronger reason supports the decisions in Dowden, supra, and in this case. In Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 1127, ch. 426, the legislature enacted amendments to the 1925 Penal Code, the 1974 Penal Code, and the Code of Criminal Procedure, which created the capital murder statutory scheme that went into effect on June 14, 1973, and continued in effect under the newly enacted Penal Code on January 1, 1974. The mandatory language of Art. 1.14, supra, was enacted as an integral part of that statutory scheme. It was enacted along with the establishment of (1) capital murder in Sec. 19.03 of the present penal code, (2) capital murder in Art. 1257(b) of the 1925 Penal Code, (3) the classification of felonies and creation of the category of capital felonies in Sec. 12.04 of today’s code, (4) the punishment for capital felonies in Sec. 12.31 of today’s code, and (5) the procedure for the punishment stage in capital cases of Art. 37.071, V.A.C.C.P. The enactment of the mandate of Art. 1.14, supra, as part of this comprehensive statutory scheme for capital felonies dictates the conclusion that the reference in Art. 1.14 to “a capital felony case” refers specifically to any capital felony case, and not just to a capital felony case in which the death penalty is sought.
Additionally, a comparison of Art. 1.14, supra, of today (quoted above) with the language of that statute before the 1973 amendment (set out below) further supports the conclusion that the legislative intent is honored in today’s decision as it was in Dowden, supra. Before amendment Art. 1.14 provided:
“The defendant in a criminal prosecution for any offense may waive any rights secured him by law except the right of trial by jury in a capital felony case in which the State has made known in open court in writing at least 15 days prior to trial that it will seek the death penalty. No case in which the State seeks the death penalty shall be tried until 15 days after such notice is given. When the State makes known to the *936court in writing in open court that it will not seek the death penalty in a capital case, the defendant may enter a plea of guilty, nolo contendere, or not guilty before the court and waive trial by jury as provided in Article 1.13, and in such case under no circumstances may the death penalty be imposed.”
The language deleted from Art. 1.14, supra, by the 1973 amendment did expressly allow waiver of a jury when the death penalty was not sought. By removing that provision of the prior law and enacting the current version of Art. 1.14 in absolute terms as part of the present capital felony statutory scheme, the legislature expressed a clear intent to abolish the prior practice that cannot be denied.
The second reason I write today is to express my view that it serves no purpose to prohibit a plea bargain in a capital case, as apparently was made in this case. While the legislature in 1973 may have amended Art. 1.14, supra, out of an abundance of caution in the wake of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), subsequent pronouncements by the Supreme Court have shown that the exercise of prosecutorial discretion is not incompatible with a constitutional death penalty scheme, and plea bargaining in such cases has been expressly approved. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 3909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976). Our legislature has approved the practice of plea bargaining. See Arts. 26.13(a)(2), (3) and 44.02, V.A.C.C.P. The legislature may wish to amend Art. 1.14, supra, so that plea bargaining may again be a permissible practice in capital felony cases. This Court is not the proper forum to restore that practice.
I concur in the judgment.