# Barrera v. State

> Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · October 7, 1998 · 982 S.W.2d 415

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9776086

## Case

- **Full name:** Omar BARRERA, Appellant, v. the STATE of Texas
- **Court:** Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
- **Decided:** October 7, 1998
- **Citations:** 982 S.W.2d 415; 1998 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 128; 1998 WL 692484
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Meyers
- **Judges:** Keller, McCormick, Mansfield, Price, Holland, Womack, Baird, Overstreet, Meyers
- **Cited by:** 116 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9776086

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that a trial court has no duty to sua sponte charge the jury on unrequested defensive issues raised by the evidence, but if the trial court on its own does instruct the jury on an issue then it signals that the defense was “the law applicable to the case.”
- recognizing that Doyle was pre-Almanza case that overemphasized importance of procedurally perfect jury charge and application paragraph in particular
- applying Malik and finding that the omission of self-defense in the application paragraph of the jury charge, even though it was adequately defined in the jury charge, was a technical violation of a state law rule, which did not affect a constitutional sufficiency of the evide…
- observing that the court of appeals “properly concluded that the failure to apply the law of self-defense to the facts of the case and to instruct the jury to acquit if they held a reasonable doubt on self-defense was error”

## Opinion text

MEYERS, Judge,
dissenting.
The State’s grounds for review and its arguments are, with all due respect, indecipherable from the State’s petition or brief. 1 Despite the lack of discernable issues raised by the State, the majority has nonetheless felt compelled to review de novo the opinion of the Court of Appeals. That is not the job of this, Court. 2 The majority opinion answers nothing from the State’s petition. It seems the majority did not want to miss an opportunity to add to the increasing number of authorities signaling the declining “importance of a procedurally perfect jury charge.” Mu- *419 jority opinion at 417. This case ought to be improvidently granted.
OVERSTREET, J., joins.
.The State’s petition badly confuses grounds for review, Tex.R. app. Proc. 68.4(f), with reasons for review, Tex.R. app. Proc. 66.3. Such petitions are usually summarily refused for non-compliance. Following are the "Grounds for Review” presented in the State’s petition (contrary to the rules, the State does not set forth any ground for review in its brief, Tex.R. app. Proc. 38.1(e); Tex.R. app. Proc. 70.3):
Holding that the trial court committed reversible error by failing to apply the law of self-defense to this case's facts, the Court of Appeals:
1. has rendered a decision in conflict with another decisions [sic] on the same matter.
2. has, by viewing the evidence in a light favorable to Appellant, rendered a decision in conflict with another decision on the same matter.
3. has, by applying Dyson’s analysis, raised important questions of state law that have not been settled by this Court, but should be.
4. has so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings as to call for an exercise of discretionary review by this Court.
(citations omitted). The next portion of .the State’s petition, entitled "Reasons for Review,” contains paragraphs or groups of paragraphs labeled as numeric "Grounds" and setting forth narrative arguments.
Not surprisingly the majority avoids setting forth the State’s "grounds for review," in favor of its own articulation of why we granted review: ”[w]e granted review to determine the proper standard for review when, in the absence of an objection, a jury charge includes the definition of self-defense but fails to contain self-defense in the application paragraph.” Majority op. at 416. In keeping with the Court’s opinion in Malik, this is really a "hypothetically correct” ground for review, as no such articulation appears in the State’s petition or brief.
. At least not in this case. This Court may, where a petition for discretionary review has not been filed, review a decision of a court of appeals on our own initiative. Tex.R. App. Proc. 66.1, 67.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9776086. Public record. Not legal advice.