Cofield v. State

891 S.W.2d 952, 1994 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 113, 1994 WL 583655
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedOctober 26, 1994
Docket1089-93
StatusPublished
Cited by172 cases

This text of 891 S.W.2d 952 (Cofield v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cofield v. State, 891 S.W.2d 952, 1994 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 113, 1994 WL 583655 (Tex. 1994).

Opinions

OPINION ON STATE’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

OVERSTREET, Judge.

Appellant was charged by indictment with possession of less than 28 grams of cocaine. On November of 1991, in a trial by jury in the 212th District Court of Galveston County, appellant was found guilty. The jury then assessed punishment at confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for 25 years and a fine of $2,500. The Thirteenth Court of Appeals reversed. Cofield v. State, 857 S.W.2d 798 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi 1993). We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review raising three questions challenging the court of appeals’ decision.1

I.

SUMMARY OF PERTINENT FACTS

The record reflects that on the evening of October 7, 1989, two Texas Department of Public Safety troopers observed appellant parked on the roadway in a vehicle at a dead-end street. Appellant was in the driver’s seat, with a woman in the front passenger seat. Both appellant and the passenger were observed making movements indicative of stuffing something under the seats. Drug paraphernalia, cocaine, and a pistol were found in the vehicle. Specifically, a glass bottle and scouring pads were found partially on the console between the bucket seats. A yellow bag, containing a wooden or glass pipe and drug paraphernalia, was found underneath the front passenger seat. A little copper pipe was found in a pouch area on the driver’s side in the doorway, while the pistol was found underneath the driver’s seat. A piece of rock cocaine was found in the passenger’s jacket pocket. One of the troopers testified about an oral statement that the passenger had made at the time of arrest which indicated that she and appellant had [954]*954been smoking cocaine shortly before the troopers had arrived.

II.

COURT OF APPEALS’ DECISION

The court of appeals sustained appellant’s point of error concerning the introduction of hearsay testimony regarding the passenger’s extrajudicial statement about smoking cocaine with appellant. Cofield v. State, supra. It held that in a situation when partners in crime are caught in the act, thus being inherently adversarial in striving to mitigate their own culpability, a statement by one inculpating himself meets the Tex.R.Crim.Evid. 803(24) hearsay exception as a statement against his own interest, but cannot be considered reliable as to the other party when it is also against that other party’s penal interest. Cofield v. State, 857 S.W.2d at 805. It also did not find any of the required corroborating evidence to indicate that the statement was clearly trustworthy as to both appellant and the passenger, rather than the passenger alone, smoking the cocaine. Id. It concluded that the erroneous admission of the passenger’s hearsay statement was not harmless and reversed. Id.

III.

THE STATE’S CLAIMS

We granted the State’s petition which presents three questions for review. Question Number One asks, “Pursuant to Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence, Rule 803(24) is appellant required to state a specific objection regarding the State’s alleged failure to introduce sufficient corroborating facts?” Question Number Two asks, “Where the hearsay statement that is within a statutory exception to the hearsay rule not only inculpates the declarant, but exposes the defendant to criminal liability as well, does a trial court always abuse its discretion in admitting the statement?” Question Number Three asks, “Did the court of appeals conduct an incorrect harm analysis by failing to consider all the factors?”

IV. ANALYSIS OF CLAIMS

A. Question Number One

With respect to Question Number One, the State suggests that appellant’s “plain vanilla hearsay objection” was insufficient to preserve error since it was not apparent that his complaint specified that insufficient corroborating circumstances supported the admission of the hearsay statement. It also suggests that all participants at trial did not in fact understand that appellant’s objection was to the insufficiency of the corroboration to meet the requirements of Tex.R.Crim.Evid. 803(24), but rather that the statement was involuntary or was not a statement against the passenger’s penal interest.

Appellant unsuccessfully objected “on grounds of hearsay” as to “[the passengerj’s statement given to him.” Identifying challenged evidence as hearsay should generally be regarded as a sufficiently specific objection. Lankston v. State, 827 S.W.2d 907, 910 (Tex.Cr.App.1992). When appellant' made his hearsay objection, the State responded that “[ijt’s well-known the rules of exception against penal interest if she made this statement.” The trial court then overruled the objection. Based upon the objection and the State’s response thereto, it is obvious that the trial court and the parties were well aware that the evidence was being proffered as an exception to the hearsay rule as a statement against the passenger’s penal interest. Thus the trial court was called upon to determine whether that exception applied. Since appellant preserved error by raising an objection to the hearsay, the burden then became the State’s to show that the evidence was admissible pursuant to some exception to the hearsay rule. Long v. State, 800 S.W.2d 545, 548 (Tex.Cr.App.1990). The answer to the State’s first question is that an appellant is required to make a specific objection. Nevertheless, based on the above discussion, the State’s question for review number one is overruled.

B. Question Number Two

With respect to Question Number Two, the State questions the court of appeals’ “over-[955]*955broad assertion” that a declarant’s statement which includes someone else in his misconduct cannot be considered reliable. The State insists such a view ignores fact situations where corroborating circumstances make the statement .reliable. The State also notes that the fact that each co-defendant is inherently adversarial, thus striving to mitigate his own culpability, does not justify the promulgation of an exception to Rule 803(24), which does not provide that a co-defendant’s hearsay statement may never be admissible, but rather that it must simply be corroborated.

Rule 803(24) requires that for a statement against interest tending to expose the declarant to criminal liability to be admissible, there must be corroborating circumstances clearly indicating the trustworthiness of the statement. The court of appeals found no corroborating evidence to indicate that the statement was clearly trustworthy as to both appellant and the passenger, rather than the passenger alone, smoking the cocaine. Cofield v. State, 857 S.W.2d at 805.

We have recently stated that the focus of the inquiry on determining the existence of corroborating circumstances is on verifying to the greatest possible extent the trustworthiness of the statement so as to avoid the admissibility of a fabrication. Davis v. State, 872 S.W.2d 743, 748 (Tex.Cr.App.1994).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
891 S.W.2d 952, 1994 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 113, 1994 WL 583655, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cofield-v-state-texcrimapp-1994.