concluding that defendant failed to present complaint that his sentence violated Texas 2 “The Texas Constitution proscribes ‘cruel or unusual punishments’ while the Eighth Amendment prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’” but the Court of Criminal Appeals has found “no significance in the difference” between the phrasing of these analogous provisions. Cantu v. State, 939 S.W.2d 627, 645 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997). Based on this authority, we consider Rumsey’s cruel-and-unusual-punishment complaints together. 3 Constitution’s protection against cruel or unusual punishment
How later courts described this case
- concluding that defendant failed to present complaint that his sentence violated Texas 2 “The Texas Constitution proscribes ‘cruel or unusual punishments’ while the Eighth Amendment prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’” but the Court of Criminal Appeals has found “no significance in the difference” between the phrasing of these analogous provisions. Cantu v. State, 939 S.W.2d 627, 645 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997). Based on this authority, we consider Rumsey’s cruel-and-unusual-punishment complaints together. 3 Constitution’s protection against cruel or unusual punishment
- holding that photographs depicting appellant’s “cheerful early childhood” were “irrelevant to [his] moral blameworthiness for the commission of a violent double-murder because such evidence ha[d] no relationship to [his] conduct in those murders”
- finding appellant waived complaint that trial court=s refusal to inform jury of minimum sentence before parole eligibility violated Texas Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment by not lodging that complaint before the trial court
- holding complaint of cruel and unusual punishment 2 … The punishment range for burglary of a habitation, a second degree felony, is two to twenty years’ confinement. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§ 12.33 (a), 30.02(c)(2) (Vernon 2003). 3 under Texas Constitution was waived because defendant presented his argument for first time on appeal
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
BAIRD, J.,
concurring with the following note: I am sympathetic to the views expressed in Judge Overstreet’s well reasoned dissent. Post, 934 S.W.2d at 131 (Overstreet, J., dissenting). However, for the reasons stated in Smith v. State, 898 S.W.2d 838, 856 (Tex.Crim.App.1995) (Baird, J., concurring), and because the Supreme Court has not revisited its opinion in Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 , 114 S.Ct. 2187 , 129 L.Ed.2d 133 (1994), I am constrained to join only the judgment of the Court.
MALONEY and MEYERS, JJ., concur in the result.