Gray v. State

152 S.W.3d 125, 2004 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 2143, 2004 WL 2896596
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 15, 2004
DocketPD-1202-03
StatusPublished
Cited by255 cases

This text of 152 S.W.3d 125 (Gray 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
Gray v. State, 152 S.W.3d 125, 2004 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 2143, 2004 WL 2896596 (Tex. 2004).

Opinions

OPINION

KEASLER, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court,

joined by KELLER, P.J., and WOMACK, HERVEY, and HOLCOMB, JJ.

The State charged Thomas Kerr Gray, III, with driving while intoxicated due to alcohol consumption. Evidence at trial showed that Gray was taking anti-depressant medication at the time. The jury instructions authorized finding that Gray was intoxicated if he took drugs which made him more susceptible to the influence of alcohol than he otherwise would have been, and therefore became intoxicated from the alcohol. We conclude that this jury charge properly applied the law to the facts of this case.

I. FACTS

The day after Tropical Storm Allison flooded Houston in 2001, Michael White-sides was driving his brand new pick-up truck on a wet, muddy road. The car behind him, he later learned, was driven by 17-year-old Gray. He noticed Gray because Gray “seemed ... unaware” and “was one foot off [Whitesides’s] bumper.” When Whitesides’s tires inevitably sprayed mud on Gray’s windshield, Gray “erratically pulled to the median,” then “cut back into traffic, across the inside lane, cutting people off. [He] got to the outside lane, and approached [Whitesides] from the rear at a high rate of speed.” Gray then rear-ended Whitesides’s truck. When White-sides approached Gray to confront him, Gray’s radio was playing “very loud” and Gray was “not acting normal, at all.”

The police arrived and, noticing Gray’s constricted pupils and the smell of alcohol on his breath, conducted field sobriety tests. Gray failed the tests and was arrested for driving while intoxicated. Gray told the police that he was taking antidepressant medication.

II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The State charged Gray by information with misdemeanor DWI, alleging that he “did then and there unlawfully while intoxicated, namely not having the normal use of his mental and physical faculties by the reason of the introduction of ALCOHOL into his body, operate a motor vehicle in a public place.”

Gray’s father testified at trial that Gray had been undergoing treatment for psychological problems for the last three years. He had been prescribed four medications — Respiratol, Zoloft, Klonopin, and Depical — during the general time period of the accident, but on that day he was taking two or three of them. His father indicated that the medications caused “disorientation” and “dizziness.” Gray’s father also testified that Gray was not drinking any alcohol that day — -“he couldn’t have.”

Gray’s stepmother testified that Gray was on three medications at the time of the accident. She also said that he had just started taking Depical three days before the incident and that Depical made him very disoriented.

The State’s chemist testified that the drugs were anti-depressants that have a depressant effect on the central nervous system. Alcohol had the same effect. “And, when you add one depressant medication to another depressant medication, it can have, what’s called, an ‘addictive [sic ] effect.’ Sometimes, what’s described as a ‘synergistic effect.’ Where the two medi[127]*127cations interact in an inappropriate way and accelerate the action of one medication.” She said that effect could manifest itself even if the person had only a small amount of alcohol.

The court’s proposed jury charge stated as follows:

You are further instructed that if a Defendant indulges in the use of a drug, to wit, Respiratol, Zoloft, Klonopin, and/or Depical, to such an extent that he thereby makes himself more susceptible to the influence of alcohol than he otherwise would have been, and by reason thereof becomes intoxicated from recent use of alcohol, he would be in the same position as though his intoxication was produced by the use of alcohol alone.

The application paragraph of the charge instructed the jury to convict if it found that Gray was driving while intoxicated “by reason of the introduction of alcohol into his body, either alone or in combination with Respiratol, Zoloft, Klonopin and/or Depical.”

Gray objected to the charge on the grounds that it did not follow the State’s information. The prosecutor responded that the charge was appropriate under Sutton v. State.2 The judge overruled Gray’s objection.

The jury found Gray guilty of misdemeanor DWI, and the judge assessed punishment at 180 days in the Harris County Jail, suspended for one year.

III. ON APPEAL

On appeal, Gray argued that the trial judge erred in charging the jury on the “synergistic effect” of drugs and alcohol because (1) it was not part of the law applicable to the case, (2) it was a comment on the weight of the evidence, (3) it was misleading and confusing, and (4) Gray was not prosecuted under a combination theory. The Court of Appeals disagreed.3 It concluded, in relevant part, that the charge incorporated the law applicable to the case, relying on our plurality opinion in Sutton.4

Gray petitioned this Court for discretionary review on two grounds. We granted the second ground, which contends that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the instruction constituted the law applicable to the case when Gray was not charged with intoxication by a combination of alcohol and drugs.

IV. ANALYSIS

Our Legislature has made clear that a trial judge’s charge to the jury must set forth “the law applicable to the case.”5 Relying on that statute, we have held that “[a] trial court is required to fully instruct the jury on the law applicable to the case and to apply that law to the facts presented.” 6 It is not enough for the charge to merely incorporate the allegation in the charging instrument. Instead, it must also apply the law to the facts adduced at trial. This is because “[t]he jury must be instructed ‘under what circumstances they [128]*128should convict, or under what circumstances they should acquit’.”7 Jury charges which fail to apply the law to the facts adduced at trial are erroneous.8

This case involves a specific kind of jury charge known as the “synergistic effect” charge. We begin with the background of this charge.

A. The Synergistic Effect Charge

Originally, our DWI statute did not define “intoxication.” In Heard v. State,9 we addressed a synergistic effect charge under that statute. (Although Heard was decided after the statute had been changed, the defendant’s offense had occurred under the previous version of the statute.) There, the information alleged driving under the influence of liquor. During trial, the defense presented evidence that the defendant had been taking several medications at the time of the offense. The evidence showed that the medications combined with alcohol “might cause an individual to lose his or her mental alertness quicker than if he or she was drinking only alcohol.”10

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
152 S.W.3d 125, 2004 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 2143, 2004 WL 2896596, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gray-v-state-texcrimapp-2004.