Victoria v. State

522 S.W.2d 919, 1975 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 969
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 21, 1975
Docket49860
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 522 S.W.2d 919 (Victoria 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
Victoria v. State, 522 S.W.2d 919, 1975 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 969 (Tex. 1975).

Opinion

OPINION

DALLY, Commissioner.

This is an appeal from a conviction for robbery with a firearm; the jury assessed punishment of imprisonment for thirteen years.

In his second ground of error the appellant has presented the principal question in this appeal. It is whether a witness who has waived her constitutional privilege against self-incrimination when testifying at the trial of one co-defendant may be compelled to testify to the same matters at a later trial of another co-defendant or may she invoke the privilege against self-incrimination and refuse to testify at the second trial. The appellant and Dora Lar-tigue, jointly indicted, and Donald Ray Roberson, in a separate indictment, were charged with committing a robbery with a firearm at a liquor store. Roberson was tried first; his appeal from a conviction for this offense was affirmed. See Roberson v. State, 513 S.W.2d 572 (Tex.Cr.App.1974). In the Roberson case, without granting her immunity the state called Dora Lartigue as a witness; she waived her privilege against self-incrimination and testified. Later in the appellant’s trial he called Lartigue as a witness and attempted to obtain her testimony concerning the same matters to which she testified at Roberson’s trial. Lartigue was permitted to invoke her privilege against self-incrimination as provided by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and she refused to testify. The court refused to compel her to testify, and for the purposes of his bill of exception the appellant offered a transcription of Lartigue’s testimony at Roberson’s trial.

It should also be noted that the prosecutor immediately before appellant’s trial moved for severance of the prosecutions between the appellant and Lartigue indicating that he intended to dismiss the charges against Lartigue at a later time. A notation on the docket sheet in this record shows that a year after the appellant’s trial the prosecution against Lartigue was placed on the “inactive docket” for a period of six years. Lartigue was serving a probated sentence in another case to be completed in six years.

Lartigue had testified at Roberson’s trial that the appellant had entered the liquor store prior to the robbery to purchase her some “soda water” and that he had not entered the liquor store to “case it” for Roberson and the other two men and that the appellant did not come back to the automobile and report how many people were in the liquor store. This evidence was corroborative of the appellant’s testimony, and it corroborated his denial of the truth of an officer’s testimony concerning a statement the officer said appellant made at the time of his arrest.

*921 The state relies on Davis v. State, 501 S.W.2d 629 (Tex.Cr.App.1973) where it was said:

“Ordinarily, by testifying at a preliminary hearing, at an inquest, before a grand jury or at a previous trial one does not waive his right to claim the privilege against self-incrimination at a later trial.”

The appellant cites us to cases such as United States v. Hoffman, 385 F.2d 501 (7th Cir. 1967), and Franco v. State, 491 S.W.2d 890 (Tex.Cr.App.1973), which hold it error for a trial court to refuse to compel a witness to testify after that witness had already been convicted of the offense about which he was to testify and was no longer subject to criminal prosecution; clearly this case is distinguishable. Here the witness had been indicted for the same robbery but not yet tried, and she was also on probation from an earlier unrelated conviction.

Although Davis v. State, supra, is the only case from this jurisdiction concerned with this question, the weight of authority from other jurisdictions also holds that voluntary testimony before a grand jury, at a prior trial or official proceeding, or other disclosure of the incriminating facts does not waive the right not to be compelled to be a witness against oneself at a later trial or other proceeding. United States v. Wilcox, 450 F.2d 1131 (5th Cir. 1971); Ottomano v. United States, 468 F.2d 269 (1st Cir. 1972); United States v. Burch, 490 F.2d 1300 (8th Cir. 1974); In re Neff, 206 F.2d 149 (3rd Cir. 1953); United States v. Miranti, 253 F.2d 135 (2nd Cir. 1958); State v. Solomon, 5 Wash.App. 412, 487 P.2d 643 (1971); Commonwealth v. Fisher, 398 Pa. 237, 157 A.2d 207 (1960); Hummell v. Superior Court, 211 A.2d 272 (R.I.1965); Salem v. State, 305 So.2d 23 (Fla.App.1974); Mallin v. Mallin, 227 Ga. 833, 183 S.E.2d 377 (1971); People v. Walker, 28 Ill.2d 585, 192 N.E.2d 819 (1963); and 8 Wigmore, Evidence, § 2276.

To the contrary are cases such as Ellis v. United States, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 35, 416 F.2d 791 (1969), and In re DeSaulnier, 276 N.E.2d 278 (Mass.1971), which have held that under certain circumstances a witness may be compelled to testify to possibly incriminating facts if at an earlier proceeding the witness knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege against self-incrimination and testified to those same facts. However, both Ellis and DeSaulnier involved prosecution witnesses who had testified before grand juries and then refused to testify at the trials on the indictments returned. Here, Lartigue was a prosecution witness at the first trial but was called by the appellant at his trial. She would have been subject to cross-examination by a different adversary with a different purpose, and factors other than those she and her counsel had considered when waiving the privilege at the first trial could have been introduced.

The facts in United States v. Wilcox supra, are similar. There the witness had testified at the first trial of the defendant but, after the conviction was reversed and remanded, refused to testify for the defendant at the second trial. The Court said there, in affirming the defendant’s re-conviction, that the trial court did not err in refusing to compel the witness to testify and that:

“Although one might conclude that there was a ‘waiver’ as to the exact words stated on the first trial, this does not eliminate the problem. For taking the stand would give the witness little control over the scope or content of examination—direct or cross. And in the circumstances of this case and the witness’ life of crime, taking the stand would expose him to perils when new or different words came out.” 450 F.2d at pp.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
522 S.W.2d 919, 1975 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 969, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/victoria-v-state-texcrimapp-1975.