Dinkins v. State

How later courts described this case

• holding that record did not support a showing that appellant requested an attorney even though a t some point during the interrogation appellant asked detective “what a lawyer would tell him to do,” and detective informed appellant “in no uncertain terms that a lawyer would tell him to keep his mouth shut and not to talk to the police at all”
• stating in a legal-sufficiency analysis of future-dangerousness special issue that mere fact that a capital offense is committed “is insufficient in itself to prove future dangerousness” even though “the circumstances of the offense alone may be sufficient to sustain the jury’s affirmative answer” to this special issue
• holding that a victim’s appointment book listing defendant’s name and a patient application listing a similar name were not hearsay because they were not offered for the truth of the matter asserted but were used to explain how the defendant became a 6 suspect
• concluding that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to permit appellant to ask a prospective juror whether he could adhere to the definition of reasonable doubt that was provided under the law at the time, but that the error was harmless

Written by the judges who cited it.