Birdwell v. State

733 S.W.2d 298, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 7378
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided May 19, 1987·No. No. 6-86-095-CR·Published

Opinion

BLEIL, Justice.

Howard Birdwell appeals his murder conviction. He complains that the court’s charge to the jury failed to properly place the burden on the State of proving the absence of sudden passion and that the evidence is insufficient to support his conviction. We disagree and affirm his conviction.

Birdwell contends that the trial court erred in overruling his objection to the court’s charge because the trial court failed to place the burden of proving the absence of the element of sudden passion on the State in the paragraph of the charge which applied the law of murder to the facts of the case. Once the issue of sudden passion has been raised, not only is the burden of proving the lack of sudden passion placed on the prosecution, but also this burden must be placed in the paragraph of the charge applying the law of murder to the facts of the case. Cobarrubio v. State, 675 S.W.2d 749, 751 (Tex.Crim.App.1983). In Cobarrubio, the charge provided:

"... [If] you believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, that on or about the 23rd day of May, 1978, in the County of Lubbock and State of Texas, as alleged in the indictment, the defendant, JOE MARTINEZ COBARRUBIO, did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual, Javier Gutierrez, by shooting him with a gun, then you will find the defendant, JOE MARTINEZ COBARRU-BIO, guilty of murder as charged in the indictment.
Unless you so find beyond a reasonable doubt, or if you have a reasonable doubt as to whether defendant is guilty of murder, then you will acquit him of murder and next consider whether he is guilty of involuntary manslaughter.”

Later in that charge to the jury the trial court instructed on the law of manslaughter and defined sudden passion and adequate cause. The deletion of the defensive issue of sudden passion from the paragraph on murder and its placement only in the paragraph on voluntary manslaughter was found to be error which precipitated a denial of due process. Cobarrubio, 675 S.W.2d at 752.

Here, the charge provided:

[I]f you believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Howard Birdwell, on or about the 26th day of July, 1985, in the County of Bowie and State of Texas ... did unlawfully then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual, William Gary Birdwell, by shooting him with a firearm, you will find the defendant guilty of the offense of murder and so say by your verdict; but if you do not so believe, or if you have a reasonable doubt thereof, you will acquit the defendant of the offense of murder and proceed to consider whether this defendant is guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

In the charge the trial court then went on to address the law governing voluntary manslaughter and gave the definitions of sudden passion and adequate cause. The charge as given contains the same error found in the Cobarrubio charge, assuming that the issue of sudden passion was present in this case.

The record contains no evidence that Birdwell was acting under the influence of sudden passion when he killed the victim. When the evidence raises the issue of sudden passion, its negation becomes an implied element of murder. Bradley v. State, 688 S.W.2d 847, 851 (Tex.Crim.App. 1985). However, until sudden passion is raised, its absence does not become an element of murder. Bradley, 688 S.W.2d at 851.

[300]*300The charge should not have included voluntary manslaughter, because there is no evidence of sudden passion to support the submission of voluntary manslaughter to the jury. Birdwell argues that the State’s failure to object to the inclusion of voluntary manslaughter in the charge when the charge was given waives any complaint the State may have on appeal concerning the sufficiency of the evidence to establish the elements of voluntary manslaughter, citing Bradley, 688 S.W.2d at 853. He apparently reasons that the State is thus estopped from arguing on appeal that there is no evidence of sudden passion. In Bradley, the appellant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, although he timely objected at trial to the inclusion of voluntary manslaughter in the charge because it was not raised by the evidence. At the conclusion of its opinion in Bradley, the Court added, as dicta:

Failure to object to the charge when given on the ground that the evidence does not support it would signal acquiescence on the part of the accused in the trial court’s judgment that sudden passion was raised.
By invoking the benefit of the lesser included offense charge at trial in not objecting to its submission to the jury, an accused will be estopped from then complaining on appeal that the evidence failed to establish all the elements of the offense.

Bradley, 688 S.W.2d at 853 (footnote omitted).

Bradley can easily be distinguished. Birdwell was convicted of murder, not voluntary manslaughter, and his objection to the charge at trial was that it improperly instructed the jury on the State’s burden of negating sudden passion or adequate cause, rather than that the charge on voluntary manslaughter was not supported by the evidence. Here, it would be the State, and not Birdwell, who, by failing to object, would be considered to have waived the sufficiency of the evidence to support a charge on voluntary manslaughter. The State, however, had no reason to object to this charge, because it could not have harmed the State. Further, because there is no evidence of sudden passion, none of the material on voluntary manslaughter should have been included in the charge. We conclude that the State, by failing to object to the charge on voluntary manslaughter, has not waived its right on appeal to raise the absence of any evidence of sudden passion.

When the error in the charge is the subject of a timely objection in the trial court, then reversal is required if the error is calculated to injure the rights of the defendant. In other words, the case must be reversed if there is some harm to the accused from the error. Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157, 171 (Tex.Crim.App. 1984). The charge as given here should not have contained the material on voluntary manslaughter because it was not supported by the evidence, although that was not the objection made by Birdwell at trial or on appeal. However, Birdwell was not harmed by the inclusion of voluntary manslaughter in the charge. Because he was not entitled to a charge on voluntary manslaughter, the trial court placed him in a better position than the position to which he was actually entitled. Lamb v. State, 680 S.W.2d 11, 16 (Tex.Crim.App.1984). We find no reversible error in the trial court’s charge.

Birdwell also maintains that the trial court erred in overruling his motion for an instructed verdict of acquittal because the State failed to produce sufficient evidence to support a murder conviction.

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Birdwell v. State, 733 S.W.2d 298, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 7378 (Tex. Ct. App. 1987).

733 S.W.2d 298 (Birdwell v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Cobarrubio v. State
675 S.W.2d 749 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1983)
Carlsen v. State
654 S.W.2d 444 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1983)
Bradley v. State
688 S.W.2d 847 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1985)
Christian v. State
686 S.W.2d 930 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1985)
Almanza v. State
686 S.W.2d 157 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1985)
Lamb v. State
680 S.W.2d 11 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1984)