Cowan v. State

787 S.W.2d 200, 1990 Tex. App. LEXIS 709, 1990 WL 36650
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 30, 1990
DocketNo. 07-89-0074-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 787 S.W.2d 200 (Cowan v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cowan v. State, 787 S.W.2d 200, 1990 Tex. App. LEXIS 709, 1990 WL 36650 (Tex. Ct. App. 1990).

Opinion

REYNOLDS, Chief Justice.

A jury, rejecting appellant Larry Gene Cowan’s defense of insanity, found him guilty of the first degree felony offense of injury to a child, for which the court imposed a sentence of confinement for life. With five points of error, appellant contends the trial court reversibly erred by (1) refusing to quash the indictment for mis-joinder and, instead, remedying it by forced election; (2) excluding appellant’s certified copy of a medical report offered under Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence 803(8)(C) and 902; (3) failing to charge the jury on the offense of voluntary manslaughter; (4) placing on appellant the burden of proof of his insanity defense; and (5) not finding prosecution to be barred by Texas Code of Criminal Procedure art. 46.02, §§ 5(m) and 7. We will overrule the points and affirm.

Appellant does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction; indeed, he concedes that “[t]he evidence is sufficient to show all elements of injury to a child and murder.” Hence, it suffices to record that the indictment against appellant joined, in four counts, the offenses of murder and injury to a child. Prior to trial the State elected to prosecute the fourth count in the indictment, by which appellant, was charged with intentionally and knowingly engaging in conduct that caused serious bodily injury to a child younger than 15 years of age. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.04(a)(1) (Vernon 1989).1 The State adduced evidence that on or about 18 March 1984, the two and one-half year old child victim was in the possession of appellant, who was absent without leave from the Marine Corps. Shortly after-wards, appellant appeared without the child and detailed his plans for leaving the state. Soon thereafter, the child was discovered dead from a severe beating about the head. The jury rejected appellant’s defense of insanity and returned a verdict of guilty.

Appellant’s first-point contention that election was an improper remedy for the misjoined offenses alleged in the indictment is premised on four subpoints. They are: (1) misjoinder is fundamental error which requires the defective indictment be quashed; and the election (2) denied him due process notice, (3) constituted an unauthorized amendment of the substance of the indictment, and (4) deprived him of the grand jury protection guaranteed a felony defendant.

Under the pre-1987 law governing join-der of separate and distinct nonproperty offenses, the joinder of the offenses of murder and injury to a child in the indictment was improper. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 3.01 (Vernon 1974);2 Tex.Crim.Proc.Code Ann. art. 21.24 (Vernon 1989); Fortune v. State, 745 S.W.2d 364, 367 (Tex.Cr.App.1988). Upon hearing appellant’s pretrial motion to set aside the indictment because of the misjoinder, the trial court chose, instead, to require the State to elect a count. In unambiguous language, the State announced on the record its election to proceed on count IV of the indictment, the offense of injury to a child. Appellant objected and, to preserve the complaint, informed the court that he would not be able to announce ready for trial, but he did not move for a continuance because the case had been specially set for trial.

Appellant submits on the authority of Fortune v. State, 745 S.W.2d at 368, that the misjoinder of the different offenses in the indictment is now fundamental error, which required the trial court to grant his motion to set aside the indictment. Although the decision in Fortune did label misjoinder a fundamental error, Leal v. State, 782 S.W.2d 844, 846 (Tex.Cr.App.1989), the decision does not require the granting of a motion to quash an indictment because of misjoinder. Indeed, the [203]*203very portion of the Fortune opinion on which appellant relies makes it clear that the trial court may grant the motion to quash or, instead, force the State to elect the offense upon which it will proceed. 745 S.W.2d at 368.

Nevertheless, appellant continues to urge the existence of a requirement to grant his motion. The requirement exists, he asserts, because by amending article 21.24, supra, in 1973, the legislature rejected the practice of charging a defendant with multiple offenses that arose from the same criminal transaction. Then, he argues, the Fortune “suggestion]” that compelled election of counts is an appropriate remedy for misjoinder is obiter dictum. This dictum, he concludes, constitutes an erroneous attempt to transfer the obsolete procedure of election among criminal transactions to a new context of misjoinder of statutory violations arising from the same transaction.

However, appellant overlooks the reality that the fundamental error of mis-joinder is one of form, which is cured when the State makes an election, Sifford v. State, 741 S.W.2d 440, 441 (Tex.Cr.App.1987), not a fundamental defect of substance, which renders the indictment insufficient. American Plant Food Corporation v. State, 508 S.W.2d 598, 602-04 (Tex.Cr.App.1974). Beyond that, the Fortune decision is subsisting law that we are not authorized to circumvent. Ex parte Baltimore, 616 S.W.2d 205, 207 (Tex.Cr.App.1981) (quoting State ex rel. Wilson v. Briggs, 171 Tex.Cr.R. 479, 351 S.W.2d 892, 894 (1961)).

As earlier indicated in this case, the trial court required the State to, and the State did, elect the offense it would prosecute, thereby curing the fundamental error of misjoinder. Sifford v. State, 741 S.W.2d at 441. It follows that appellant is not entitled to a reversal of his conviction simply because he objected to the misjoinder in the trial court. Leal v. State, 782 S.W.2d at 846.

Still, appellant contends that prosecutorial election to remedy misjoined counts raises serious statutory and constitutional questions. The questions he envisions are the denial of due process notice of the charge to be considered at trial, the unauthorized amendment of the substance of the indictment, and the deprivation of the grand jury protection constitutionally guaranteed a felony defendant.

We agree that appellant had the right to be notified in writing of the specific charge to be considered at trial in sufficient time to permit his preparation. Tex. Const, art. I, § 10; Tex.Crim.Proc.Code Ann. art. 1.05 (Vernon 1977); In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 33, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527 (1967). But we do not agree that he was denied due process notice in this case by his perceived possibility of prosecutorial manipulation because, he says with reference to Fortune v. State,

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Related

Cowan v. State
840 S.W.2d 435 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1992)

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Bluebook (online)
787 S.W.2d 200, 1990 Tex. App. LEXIS 709, 1990 WL 36650, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cowan-v-state-texapp-1990.