Robinson v. State

656 S.W.2d 111
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided November 2, 1983·No. 04-81-00121-CR·Published·Cited by 7 cases

Opinion

OPINION

BUTTS, Justice.

Appellant was convicted of murder. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 19.02(a)(1) (Vernon 1974). Finding appellant guilty after a bench trial, the court assessed punishment at fifty (50) years imprisonment.

Asserting nine grounds of error, appellant claims: that the State and the trial court coerced him into waiving his right to a jury trial by making the risk of death the price of asserting the right; that error occurred when the court overruled his objection to the record and when the court refused to conduct a hearing thereafter; that the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction; that the evidence failed to prove the indictment’s allegation of the means of death by slashing the complainant’s throat; that fundamental defect exists in the indictment, and; that the trial court erred in overruling his motion for discovery. We do not agree with these contentions and affirm the judgment.

Was appellant coerced by the State and trial court to waive his right to a jury trial? Originally appellant was indicted for capital murder. The record discloses that subsequent plea negotiations brought the case to trial based upon an information. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 1.141 (Vernon 1977). Murder is a lesser included offense of capital murder, and the State may reduce the charge to that offense. Ex parte McClelland, 588 S.W.2d 957, 959 (Tex.Cr.App.1979). In the present case plea negotiations led to the reduced offense of murder; the appellant does not argue that he desired to be tried for capital murder. He says he did not want to face the death penalty, however, he also desired and should have had a jury trial on the murder charge. Thus, he contends, he gave up his valuable right to a jury trial because of coercion.

The defendant in a noncapital case has the constitutional right under the United States Constitution and the Texas Constitution to a trial by jury. Any waiver of that right must be voluntarily and intelligently made to be valid. Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023, 82 L.Ed. 1461, 1466 (1938). The Supreme Court has held this to be a fundamental right to which the voluntary and intelligent waiver standard will apply. Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 242-43, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 1712, 23 L.Ed.2d 274, 279 (1969). An effective waiver of the constitutional right must be an intelligent act done with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and the likely consequences. Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 748, 90 S.Ct. 1463,1468, 25 L.Ed.2d 747, 756 (1970). Martinez v. State, 555 S.W.2d 462, 463 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); arts. 1.13, 1.14, 1.15.

Appellant testified he decided to waive the jury trial and not take a chance on the death penalty. His counsel advised him he had a right to a jury trial, but if he waived that right, he would be tried for murder and not capital murder. The prosecutor agreed the reason for reducing the case to “straight murder” was in exchange for waiving the jury trial.

Initially we point out that the ways in which prosecutors choose to conduct their plea negotiations are generally within the discretion of the prosecutors. If the prosecutor chooses not to be sufficiently persuasive in making his offer, or if he makes no offer at all, the defendant is equally without legal recourse. Quinones v. State, 592 S.W.2d 933, 941 (Tex.Cr.App.1980).

The Supreme Court has distinguished between a State’s retaliation against a defendant for exercising a valid legal right, and the “give-and-take” negotiations common in plea bargaining between the prosecution and the defense. In the *115 latter instance, there is no forbidden element of punishment or retaliation so long as the accused is free to accept or reject the prosecution’s offer. That Court wrote in Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 363, 98 S.Ct. 663, 668, 54 L.Ed.2d 604, 612 (1978),

Plea bargaining flows from ‘the mutuality of advantage’ to defendants and prosecutors, each with his own reasons for wanting to avoid trial....
‡ ‡ ‡ ⅜ ‡ sjc
While confronting a defendant with the risk of more severe punishment clearly may have a ‘discouraging effect on the defendant’s assertion of his trial rights,’ the imposition of these difficult choices [is] an inevitable ... and permissible ‘attribute of any legitimate system which tolerates and encourages the negotiation of pleas.’

Although in this case all agreed the plea negotiations took place in the trial judge’s chambers, we find nothing in the record to indicate the trial judge entered into the discussions, nor does appellant allege that he did. There is no evidence that appellant could not have rejected the offer. Appellant’s waiver of a jury trial was freely and voluntarily given as a result of plea negotiations. This was his free choice in response to prosecutorial persuasion. Grounds of error one and two are overruled.

Error is next urged for failure of the trial court to order included in the instant transcript the indictment, motions and any other documents in the capital murder case which would have been required to be included in the transcript had that case been prosecuted and appealed. Tex.Code Crim. Proc.Ann. art. 40.09(1) (Supp.1982-83).

Appellant timely objected to the record in the murder case, calling the attention of the court to the omission of those instruments, art. 40.09(7). The trial court conducted a hearing but did not order the instruments to be included in the record.

It is clear that appellant did not seek to introduce the indictment or the other instruments from the abandoned case into evidence at any time. Nor did he designate any of those instruments to be included in the record, (art. 40.09(1)) Compare Aguilar v. State, 621 S.W.2d 781, 786 (Tex.Cr.App.1981). Since he did not affirmatively pursue these methods to secure inclusion of the papers, our primary question is whether the trial court abused its discretion by its refusal to so supplement the record. This was a court trial. Everyone knew of the previous capital murder indictment and what had transpired to bring appellant before the same court on a reduced charge of murder. This court has the statement of facts with defense testimony at the hearing for a new trial outlining the plea-negotiations which culminated in the bench trial. We perforce know of the capital murder indictment and ancillary matters regarding that case. We find appellant has not shown how he has been harmed by failure to include the documents in this record. See, e.g., Zanders v. State, 480 S.W.2d 708 (Tex.Cr.App.1972).

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Robinson v. State, 656 S.W.2d 111 (Tex. Ct. App. 1983).

656 S.W.2d 111 (Robinson v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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