Court Opinion

ID: 9783851
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:13:45.501805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:38.594750
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting.
The jury returned a proper punishment verdict recommending community supervision and stated that the verdict was unanimous, and the trial court accepted the jury’s punishment verdict and discharged the jury.
Contrary to the majority’s claim that we cannot tell from the record whether anyone talked to the discharged jury, the trial court made clear that someone who was not a former juror in this case had improperly communicated with at least one former juror in this case. The trial court stated, “It has been brought to my attention that the jury had some question about perhaps the verdict or the verdict form.” Someone told the trial court that at least one former juror in this case had a question. If a former juror in this case told the trial court, then the trial court communicated with one of the members of the discharged jury. If someone else brought the trial court the message that at least one of the former jurors had a question, then that unknown person communicated with at least one member of the discharged jury. No note memorializing their communication appears in the record, nor was any such note read in open court in the presence of the lawyers and the defendant; the code of criminal procedure requires that such communication be memorialized in the record.12
The group of people who rendered the second punishment verdict after the improper communication was no longer under oath and no longer bound by the instructions governing jurors. Their second punishment verdict was but the act of a collection of individuals who had previously been members of the jury. Consequently, I agree with the majority that the second punishment verdict was unlawful. In fact, it was no verdict at all.
But I disagree with the majority’s disposition of this case. Appellant does not ask this court to reverse this judgment; he asks only that it be modified. Specifically, he asks only for the punishment to which the trial court sentenced him after accepting the only proper punishment verdict returned by the lawfully impaneled and sworn jury. He believes that it is the only lawful punishment. I agree.
Cases interpreting article 44.29 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure have held that retrial on punishment is appropriate only for errors “literally” occurring in the punishment stage.13 This statute is analogous to the holding in Beedy v. State and its progeny that the remedy for an improper cumulation order is deletion of the order and not retrial on punishment.14 Soon after it handed down Beedy, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals explained in a similar case,
In Beedy [,] ... [w]e held that an unlawful cumulation order did not constitute reversible error under ... art. 44.29 and that the proper remedy for *244the unlawful cumulation order was to reform the judgment to delete the cumu-lation order ....
... [A]s in Beedy, the trial judge simply did not have the authority to enter the order he did. Beedy controls this case. The court of appeals appropriately deleted the unlawful portion and left the lawful portion of the order intact, notwithstanding the trial court’s pronouncement of an alternative sentence.15
Further, rule 43.3 of the rules of appellate procedure provides, “When reversing a trial court’s judgment, the court must render the judgment that the trial court should have rendered, except when ... a remand is necessary for further proceedings or the interests of justice require a remand for another trial.”16
Here, no error was made during the punishment phase of the trial. The error was made after the punishment hearing and after the jury decided the punishment issue. The problem with remanding this case for a new trial on punishment is that the jury had finished its job of assessing Appellant’s punishment before the trial court erred. The jurors determined guilt and determined punishment in a proper form. The trial court accepted the verdict and imposed the jury’s punishment in open court. Appellant’s sentence was probated, and he did not ask for a new trial. The trial had ended. Then the trial court erroneously changed the punishment from a probated sentence to a prison term. How many times must Appellant be placed in jeopardy in the same case? The majority would have him placed in jeopardy for a third time.
Rather than placing Appellant in jeopardy for the third time by remanding for a new punishment hearing when the original punishment hearing ended without reversible error,17 I would modify the judgment to delete the unlawful sentence and to instead correct the judgment to reflect the sentence lawfully pronounced in open court before the jury was unlawfully recalled.18 Because the majority has chosen to place Appellant in jeopardy for a third time by remanding for a new trial on punishment, even though there was no reversible error in the lawful punishment phase of the trial,19 I respectfully dissent.

. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 36.27 (West 2006).

. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 44.29(b) (West Supp. 2011); Carson v. State, 6 S.W.3d 536, 539 (Tex.Crim.App.1999).

. See Beedy v. State, 250 S.W.3d 107, 113 (Tex.Crim.App.2008).

. Morris v. State, 301 S.W.3d 281, 295-96 (Tex.Crim.App.2009) (citations omitted).

. Tex.R.App. P. 43.3.

. See Morris, 301 S.W.3d at 295-96.

. See Tex.R.App. P. 43.3.

. See Morris, 301 S.W.3d at 295-96.