explaining that for a defendant to be entitled to a lesser-included offense charge, there must be some evidence in the record from which a rational jury could acquit the defendant of the greater offense while convicting him of the lesser offense
How later courts described this case
- explaining that for a defendant to be entitled to a lesser-included offense charge, there must be some evidence in the record from which a rational jury could acquit the defendant of the greater offense while convicting him of the lesser offense
- holding in capital murder case that “trial court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that there was no evidence that would permit a jury rationally to find that appellant” was guilty only of the lesser-included offense of murder
- holding that appellant waived complaint regarding allegedly improper jury argument by failing to object to it in the trial court, even if such argument could not have been cured by an instruction
- concluding that the "trial court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that there 10 was no evidence that would permit a jury rationally to find that appellant" was guilty only of the lesser-included offense
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
WOMACK, J.,
filed a concurring opinion, in which PRICE, JOHNSON, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.
Before the citizens who had been summoned were examined for jury service, they answered written questions. Question 22 allowed them to give their views about the death penalty. One prospective juror, Deborah Hawkins, wrote “that no one has a right to kill. And no one should be allowed to live for killing some one else.” When she was examined orally, she said she had thought about her position for “quite a few years now,” and she had formulated it from something that happened to her brother-in-law. “He was murdered a few years back.” That was the only basis for her opinion. She said that the killing “was senseless.” Follow *674 ing her answer in the record is the court reporter’s notation, “(Tears in eyes).” The prospective juror affirmed that she could base her punishment verdict on the evidence, but when she was called on to reconcile those affirmations with her written answer, she said, “I can’t. ... I don’t know.” She consistently maintained that she would base her verdict on the law and the evidence, and she said that she could consider mental illness as a mitigating factor that she could consider in deciding punishment.
The trial court denied the appellant’s challenge for cause, and the appellant was required to use one of his allotted peremptory challenges on the juror. Today we find no error because we defer to the trial court’s seeing the jurors’ demeanors and hearing the jurors’ voices. Ante, at 667-669. This is a venerable rule for reviewing credibility decisions, to which there is little alternative in a close case. My question is, why permit close cases in selecting jurors?
When a court faces an issue of fact, it must rely on limited sources of information. Only so many witnesses will have relevant information about a contested issue of fact. "When evidence conflicts, hard choices must be made. The trial judge is the person whose decision must be respected. But there is ordinarily no such need when it comes to deciding whether a citizen is qualified for jury service. If the question is close, the juror can be sent away.
We said exactly that a few years ago. We applied our harmless-error standard to a line of cases in which we had held that judgments of conviction would be reversed when a State’s challenge for cause was erroneously granted. We said, “By the standards of stare decisis, analysis of precedent, and logic, th[at] holding ... is unsupportable. It is also contrary to a policy which we think courts should follow: the liberal granting of challenges for cause. The venire comprises so many jurors who are clearly qualified that it is unnecessary to err by denying a challenge for cause on a close question.” Jones v. State, 982 S.W.2d 386, 394 (Tex.Cr.App.1998).
Maybe the trial court could see in Veni-re Member Hawkins’s demeanor and hear in her voice something that I cannot read in her words, that she could excuse a murderer from the death penalty. But I do think that, when a potential juror in a capital murder case is crying about the murder of her relative and thinks that no one who has killed another should be allowed to live, we could ask our trial judges to let her go to a court that is trying a theft ease and bring in another person for the murder trial. If Ms. Murray were an eyewitness to the crime, she might well be irreplaceable. But as a juror, she easily could have been replaced. I do not say that the trial judge’s decision of this close question of fact was wrong. But it was contrary to the policy that courts should follow.