finding that Appellant's young age, lack of a prior record or arrests, the absence of psychiatric evidence, and his surrender to the police did not support a verdict of future dangerousness
How later courts described this case
- finding that Appellant's young age, lack of a prior record or arrests, the absence of psychiatric evidence, and his surrender to the police did not support a verdict of future dangerousness
- where evidence held insufficient there was no psychiatric testimony, no character evidence and no prior criminal record, and defendant cooperated with police
- record showed additional counsel appointed two days prior to trial, but record also showed original counsel participated in trial
- no prior arrests, murder neither brutal nor calculated
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
With respect to the first ground of error, if appellant’s questions and her answers, made more difficult since the complainant was testifying through an interpreter, are to be regarded as an attempt to impeach her identification such that bolstering testimony then becomes admissible, then the *604 rule of Lyons v. State, 388 S.W.2d 950 (Tex.Cr.App.1965) has lost its vitality. As I view the crossexamination quoted in the majority opinion, certainly there was nothing close to impeachment. 1 It is, as in Lyons, supra, “True, she was fully cross-examined by appellant with reference to her identification, but she was not impeached.” Realistically considered, the crossexamination is so desultory and pointless and the responses so adequately affirmative that it may not be fairly characterized as an “attempt” at impeachment. But if the quoted testimony, almost conversationally given, is enough to admit bolstering by third persons, then the lesson being taught by the Court is that an appellant goes into the matter of identification with an eyewitness at his peril.
However, in light of all evidence including that of the accomplice witness, the issue could not have loomed large in the collective mind of the jury.
Accordingly, I concur in the remainder of the opinion of the Court and its judgment.
ROBERTS and TOM G. DAVIS, JJ., join.
. In order of descriptive features of the armed robber inquired about, the witness estimated height, stated color of skin, disclaimed reporting short brown hair (but is not shown to have erred), named kind of outer garment (that obviously lost something in the translation), conceded no recall of pants, thought no facial scar, compared length and cropping of his hair to hers and, again, confessed to lack of attention to pants. Such crossexamination may have laid a predicate for impeachment in only one respect — “Did you tell the police he had short brown hair?” — but there was no effective followup, thus no impeachment. Otherwise, the cross-examiner seems to have accepted her answers.