OPINION
PRICE, J.,
delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
A jury rejected the appellant’s self-defense claim, convicted him of murder, and assessed his punishment at sixty years’ confinement in the penitentiary. At the punishment phase of the trial, the appellant requested a sudden passion instruction. The trial court denied his request, and the Fourteenth Court of Appeals affirmed the appellant’s conviction but reversed the trial court’s judgment with respect to punishment, finding that the trial court erred by not giving the sudden passion instruction and that the error was “harmful.”
According to the court of appeals, the mere fact that the jury might have found in the affirmative on the sudden passion issue, subjecting him to a maximum sentence of only twenty years’ imprisonment, was alone enough to conclude that the appellant had been harmed.
We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to examine both the court of appeals’s error and harm analyses. We reverse the judgment of the court of appeals with respect to punishment.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
In the Trial Court
The appellant was indicted for murder.
On the evening of August 29, 2009, the victim, Kwasi Johnson, went with Derrick Londow to a Houston strip club called Gator’s. At some point during that same evening, the appellant and his two “girlfriends,” one being Brandi Cleveland, also arrived at Gator’s. Cleveland, a prostitute, began approaching men in Gator’s to offer her services. She eventually approached Johnson and Londow, and Cleveland offered to have sex later that night with the two men for the agreed rate of two hundred and forty dollars.
During the early morning hours of August 30, 2009, Johnson called Cleveland in order to arrange to pick her up for “the date.” Johnson and Londow picked Cleveland up from the home she shared with the appellant and headed to Johnson’s apartment. Once they arrived at the apartment, Londow left Johnson and Cleveland, and Johnson then attempted to negotiate a lower price. Cleveland refused the counteroffer, and Johnson offered to drive her home. In the car, Cleveland notified the appellant that Johnson was bringing her home and that “the date” was a “no-go,” alerting the appellant that Johnson had not delivered payment. When they arrived, Johnson brought the car to a halt and Cleveland got out, leaving the front passenger door open. As Cleveland walked up the path to the house, the appellant approached her and confirmed that the deal was a “no-go.” The appellant then continued down the path to Johnson, who was sitting in the car.
At trial, the appellant testified to the events leading up to the shooting and claimed that he acted in self-defense. Upon approaching Johnson’s vehicle, the appellant noted that Johnson had placed a gun on the console. As the conversation between the men turned to why “the date” did not happen and why Johnson did not pay Cleveland, Johnson’s demeanor became more combative. According to the appellant, he “[h]eard frustration in [Johnson’s] voice[,]” Johnson began to speak in a “heightened tone[,]” and Johnson began to display a sort of “aggressiveness” in his speaking. The appellant claimed that, when he pressed Johnson, asking him to give Cleveland something for her time, Johnson told the appellant, “fuck you, fuck that bitch, everything you stand for, I’ll kill you.”
A firelight ensued. The appellant’s description at trial as to who commenced the shooting was somewhat inconsistent. On direct examination, he testified 1) that Johnson shot him in the abdomen as he was reaching for his gun; 2) that Johnson shot him before he reached for his gun; and 3) that he reached for his gun when he saw the muzzle flash coming from Johnson’s car. When the prosecutor confronted the appellant with these three variations on cross-examination, the appellant maintained, “I felt the shot as I was reaching for my handgun.” Asked why he shot Johnson, the appellant replied, “Because I felt threatened for my life, sir. I felt it was self-defense. I felt I was righteous.” Johnson’s car and body were found nearby with his handgun still inside the car. The appellant conceded that in his initial interview with the police, he had failed to tell the police that he acted in self-defense, had a gun, or shot the victim; instead, he had fabricated a story about being the victim of a drive-by shooting.
Cleveland, the only other eyewitness to the gun battle, gave testimony that largely substantiated the appellant’s description. She testified that she stood close enough to Johnson’s and the appellant’s conversation to have heard it. However, according to her testimony, she “really wasn’t paying attention the whole time” and was mostly focused on her phone. But, after hearing gunshots, she glanced over in time to see a “muzzle flash” coming from inside of Johnson’s car, while simultaneously seeing the appellant raise his arm. While ballistic experts and investigators from the Houston Police Department confirmed that a gun battle took place, in which both men fired multiple shots, none could say which party fired first. After the close of evidence, the jury was instructed on the law regarding self-defense. However, it found the appellant guilty of murder, necessarily rejecting the appellant’s self-defense claim.
The appellant elected to proceed to the jury for the punishment phase of the trial. After both sides presented punishment evidence, but before closing arguments, defense counsel and the trial judge had the following exchange regarding the submission of a sudden passion instruction to the jury:
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: I would request a charge on sudden passion ... specifically that [the appellant] stated that once the shooting began that he was overwhelmed by emotions of fear.
THE COURT: Once his shooting began?
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Once the shooting began, that he was overwhelmed by emotions of fear, disorientation, confusion, et cetera. And, [Y]our Honor, I would argue that this would substantiate the charge.
[[Image here]]
THE COURT: ... Obviously the self-defense has been rejected by the jury so — I just don’t see it. I’m going to deny that.
In the absence of a sudden passion instruction, which would have capped the available punishment at twenty years’ confinement, the jury assessed punishment at 60 years in the penitentiary.
In the Court of Appeals
The court of appeals reversed the trial court’s judgment with respect to punishment and remanded the cause to the trial court for a new punishment hearing.
After determining that the trial court erred not to grant the appellant’s request to include a sudden passion instruction in the punishment phase jury instruction, the court of appeals next proceeded to determine whether the appellant had been harmed by the lack of the instruction.
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OPINION
PRICE, J.,
delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
A jury rejected the appellant’s self-defense claim, convicted him of murder, and assessed his punishment at sixty years’ confinement in the penitentiary. At the punishment phase of the trial, the appellant requested a sudden passion instruction. The trial court denied his request, and the Fourteenth Court of Appeals affirmed the appellant’s conviction but reversed the trial court’s judgment with respect to punishment, finding that the trial court erred by not giving the sudden passion instruction and that the error was “harmful.”
According to the court of appeals, the mere fact that the jury might have found in the affirmative on the sudden passion issue, subjecting him to a maximum sentence of only twenty years’ imprisonment, was alone enough to conclude that the appellant had been harmed.
We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to examine both the court of appeals’s error and harm analyses. We reverse the judgment of the court of appeals with respect to punishment.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
In the Trial Court
The appellant was indicted for murder.
On the evening of August 29, 2009, the victim, Kwasi Johnson, went with Derrick Londow to a Houston strip club called Gator’s. At some point during that same evening, the appellant and his two “girlfriends,” one being Brandi Cleveland, also arrived at Gator’s. Cleveland, a prostitute, began approaching men in Gator’s to offer her services. She eventually approached Johnson and Londow, and Cleveland offered to have sex later that night with the two men for the agreed rate of two hundred and forty dollars.
During the early morning hours of August 30, 2009, Johnson called Cleveland in order to arrange to pick her up for “the date.” Johnson and Londow picked Cleveland up from the home she shared with the appellant and headed to Johnson’s apartment. Once they arrived at the apartment, Londow left Johnson and Cleveland, and Johnson then attempted to negotiate a lower price. Cleveland refused the counteroffer, and Johnson offered to drive her home. In the car, Cleveland notified the appellant that Johnson was bringing her home and that “the date” was a “no-go,” alerting the appellant that Johnson had not delivered payment. When they arrived, Johnson brought the car to a halt and Cleveland got out, leaving the front passenger door open. As Cleveland walked up the path to the house, the appellant approached her and confirmed that the deal was a “no-go.” The appellant then continued down the path to Johnson, who was sitting in the car.
At trial, the appellant testified to the events leading up to the shooting and claimed that he acted in self-defense. Upon approaching Johnson’s vehicle, the appellant noted that Johnson had placed a gun on the console. As the conversation between the men turned to why “the date” did not happen and why Johnson did not pay Cleveland, Johnson’s demeanor became more combative. According to the appellant, he “[h]eard frustration in [Johnson’s] voice[,]” Johnson began to speak in a “heightened tone[,]” and Johnson began to display a sort of “aggressiveness” in his speaking. The appellant claimed that, when he pressed Johnson, asking him to give Cleveland something for her time, Johnson told the appellant, “fuck you, fuck that bitch, everything you stand for, I’ll kill you.”
A firelight ensued. The appellant’s description at trial as to who commenced the shooting was somewhat inconsistent. On direct examination, he testified 1) that Johnson shot him in the abdomen as he was reaching for his gun; 2) that Johnson shot him before he reached for his gun; and 3) that he reached for his gun when he saw the muzzle flash coming from Johnson’s car. When the prosecutor confronted the appellant with these three variations on cross-examination, the appellant maintained, “I felt the shot as I was reaching for my handgun.” Asked why he shot Johnson, the appellant replied, “Because I felt threatened for my life, sir. I felt it was self-defense. I felt I was righteous.” Johnson’s car and body were found nearby with his handgun still inside the car. The appellant conceded that in his initial interview with the police, he had failed to tell the police that he acted in self-defense, had a gun, or shot the victim; instead, he had fabricated a story about being the victim of a drive-by shooting.
Cleveland, the only other eyewitness to the gun battle, gave testimony that largely substantiated the appellant’s description. She testified that she stood close enough to Johnson’s and the appellant’s conversation to have heard it. However, according to her testimony, she “really wasn’t paying attention the whole time” and was mostly focused on her phone. But, after hearing gunshots, she glanced over in time to see a “muzzle flash” coming from inside of Johnson’s car, while simultaneously seeing the appellant raise his arm. While ballistic experts and investigators from the Houston Police Department confirmed that a gun battle took place, in which both men fired multiple shots, none could say which party fired first. After the close of evidence, the jury was instructed on the law regarding self-defense. However, it found the appellant guilty of murder, necessarily rejecting the appellant’s self-defense claim.
The appellant elected to proceed to the jury for the punishment phase of the trial. After both sides presented punishment evidence, but before closing arguments, defense counsel and the trial judge had the following exchange regarding the submission of a sudden passion instruction to the jury:
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: I would request a charge on sudden passion ... specifically that [the appellant] stated that once the shooting began that he was overwhelmed by emotions of fear.
THE COURT: Once his shooting began?
[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Once the shooting began, that he was overwhelmed by emotions of fear, disorientation, confusion, et cetera. And, [Y]our Honor, I would argue that this would substantiate the charge.
[[Image here]]
THE COURT: ... Obviously the self-defense has been rejected by the jury so — I just don’t see it. I’m going to deny that.
In the absence of a sudden passion instruction, which would have capped the available punishment at twenty years’ confinement, the jury assessed punishment at 60 years in the penitentiary.
In the Court of Appeals
The court of appeals reversed the trial court’s judgment with respect to punishment and remanded the cause to the trial court for a new punishment hearing.
After determining that the trial court erred not to grant the appellant’s request to include a sudden passion instruction in the punishment phase jury instruction, the court of appeals next proceeded to determine whether the appellant had been harmed by the lack of the instruction.
Because the appellant expressly requested a sudden passion instruction, the court of appeals correctly concluded that the record need only demonstrate “some harm” to warrant reversal.
The appellate court then concluded that, “[i]f the jury had determined that [the appellant] acted out of sudden passion, the offense would have been reduced to a felony of the second degree, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.”
Thus, the court of appeals found harm on the basis that the sudden passion instruction
could
have resulted in the jury finding that the appellant acted in sudden passion, authorizing a maximum punishment of no more than twenty years, without addressing the likelihood that the jury actually
would
have found that the appellant’s behavior resulted from sudden passion on the facts of this particular case. We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to examine the court of appeals’s holding.
THE LAW
Prior to September 1, 1994, whether a defendant committed murder under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause was an issue that was litigated at the guilt phase of the trial.
If the evidence raised the issue of sudden passion, the question was submitted to the jury, and it had the option of finding the defendant guilty of the
lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter.
Because of certain anomalies generated by this framework,
the Legislature acted in 1993 to remove the crime of voluntary manslaughter from the Texas Penal Code.
Under the current statutory scheme, the question of whether a defendant killed while under the immediate influence of sudden passion is a punishment issue.
Currently, a murder committed under the “immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause” is a second-degree felony carrying a maximum punishment of twenty years’ imprisonment.
Sudden passion is “passion directly caused by and arising out of provocation by the individual killed” which arises at the time of the murder.
Adequate cause is a “cause that would commonly produce a degree of anger, rage, resentment, or terror in a person of ordinary temper, sufficient to render the mind incapable of cool reflection.”
The defendant has the burden of production and persuasion with respect to the issue of sudden passion.
To justify a jury instruction on the issue of sudden passion at the punishment phase, the record must at least minimally support an inference: 1) that the defendant in fact acted under the immediate influence of a passion such as terror, anger, rage, or resentment; 2) that his sudden passion was in fact induced by some provocation by the deceased or another acting with him, which provocation would commonly produce such a passion in a person of ordinary temper; 3) that he committed the murder before regaining his capacity for cool reflection; and 4) that a causal connection existed “between the provocation, passion, and homicide.”
It does not matter that the evidence supporting the submission of a sudden passion instruction may be weak, impeached, contradicted, or unbelievable.
If the evidence thus raises the issue from any source, during either phase of trial, then the defendant has satisfied his burden of production, and the trial court must submit the issue in the jury charge — at least if the defendant requests it.
When an appellant protests that the trial court erred not to grant his request to charge the jury regarding sudden passion, a reviewing court must first determine whether the complained-of error exists.
If the reviewing court agrees that a trial court erred by failing to submit a sudden passion instruction, it then analyzes whether the error harmed the appellant.
Harm does not emanate from the mere failure to include the requested instruction.
A reviewing court undertakes a harm analysis by following the standards as set out in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 36.19.
If the error is preserved, the record must demonstrate that the appellant has suffered “some harm.”
In an
Almanza
harm analysis, “burdens of proof or persuasion have no place[.]”
Harm must be evaluated in light of the complete jury charge, the arguments of counsel, the entirety of the evidence, including the contested issues and weight of the probative evidence, and any other relevant factors revealed by the record as a whole.
To assay harm, we focus on the evidence and record to determine the likelihood that a jury would have believed that the appellant acted out of sudden passion had it been given the instruction.
ANALYSIS
Error
Relying on
Daniels v.
State,
the State argues that the trial court did not err by failing to include a sudden passion instruction because the appellant’s assertion of a “bare claim of fear” at the trial level did not rise to the level of terror necessary to trigger a sudden passion instruction.
In
Daniels,
we explained that
“a bare claim of’ fear will not necessarily support a claim of sudden passion, but that fear that “rises to the level of ‘terror’ ” will suffice (if the cause is adequate) to invoke an instruction on the issue.
The appellant counters that, taking his “bare claim” of fear in context of the totality of the circumstances surrounding the confrontation between the two men, a jury could reasonably infer both that the appellant experienced sufficient fear to cause him to lose the capacity for cool reflection, and that Johnson’s conduct was adequate to induce such an emotional state in a man of ordinary temperament.
According to the appellant, because there was some evidence to support the appellant’s contention that he “was in the grip of ‘passion’ ” when he shot Johnson, the trial court should have given the instruction.
We conclude that, in any event, whatever error the trial court may have committed by failing to charge the jury with respect to sudden passion did not harm the appellant.
Finding our harm analysis thus dispositive, we need not address whether the trial court did, in fact, err not to include the instruction.
Harm
This is not our first occasion to address the question of how a jury’s rejection of a self-defense claim bears on a reviewing court’s
Almanza
harm analysis with respect to the erroneous denial of a sudden passion instruction. In
Trevino v. State,
upon which both the court of appeals and the appellant principally rely, a jury rejected Trevino’s self-defense claim and convicted him of murder for killing his wife.
At the punishment phase of trial, Trevino requested a sudden passion instruction, but the trial court declined to include it in the jury charge.
We con-eluded that the trial court erred and turned to whether Trevino was harmed by the absence of a sudden passion instruction.
In conducting a harm analysis, we did not explicitly invoke the four
Almanza
considerations.
Our inquiry simply focused on the likelihood that the jury would have found sudden passion based on the state of the record as a whole.
The record revealed two competing theories: 1) Trevino’s assertion that he acted in self-defense, versus 2) the State’s claim that Trevino intentionally killed his wife and subsequently staged the scene to appear as if he had acted only to protect himself.
Based on the record as a whole, we were unable to declare that, “had it received an instruction on sudden passion, the jury would not have made an affirmative finding on the issue[,]” and therefore, we could not say that Trevino did not suffer “some harm.”
We explained that a jury could have rejected Trevino’s self-defense claim and yet still have believed that he killed his wife in the heat of passion and staged the scene
afterward
to appear as though he acted in self-defense.
However, we did not discount the possibility that “[t]he evidence in a case in which a jury rejected a claim of self-defense could demonstrate also that the appellant was not harmed by the failure to receive a sudden passion charge[.]”
We think that this is such a case.
The success of the appellant’s self-defense claim boiled down to whether the jury would accept that, when he shot at Johnson, he reasonably believed that deadly force was immediately necessary to protect himself from Johnson’s use of deadly force. No other element of the self-defense claim was refuted by the evidence, which established without' contradiction that a mutual gun battle took place. Moreover, the trial court specifically admonished the jury “not to consider whether the [appellant] failed to retreat.” Therefore, the jury’s rejection of the appellant’s self-defense claim demonstrates that the jury simply did not believe his claim that he reasonably believed deadly force was immediately necessary.
To reach this conclusion, the jury must have rejected the inference, stemming from both the appellant’s and Cleveland’s testimony, that Johnson, not the appellant, fired first. This is because, had the jury in fact believed that Johnson fired first, as the appellant contended, there would have been no impediment to a finding that the appellant reasonably believed it was immediately necessary to meet Johnson’s deadly force with justifiable deadly force of his own. Under these circumstances, the jury would almost certainly have acquitted the appellant based on his self-defense claim. But it did not.
It is highly unlikely that a jury that had already rejected the appellant’s claim that he reasonably believed that deadly force was immediately necessary to defend himself would nevertheless find in his favor on the issue of sudden passion. To prove sudden passion, the appellant would have had to establish,
inter alia,
1) that he actually acted under the influence of a fear so great that it caused him to lose his capacity for cool reflection, and 2) that Johnson’s actions were adequate to produce such a degree of fear in a man of ordinary temperament. But a jury that had already discredited the appellant’s
claim that he reasonably believed deadly force to be immediately necessary would be unlikely to believe that, at the time the appellant first fired, he was actually experiencing a level of fear that caused him to lose control. Moreover, even had the jury believed that the appellant
subjectively
experienced such a level of fear, it would not likely have found that Johnson’s behavior presented a provocation adequate to produce such a degree of fear in a man of ordinary temperament. Based on the record and evidence before us, it is exceedingly unlikely that the appellant suffered “some harm” as a result of the trial court’s failure to give the jury a sudden passion instruction based on the appellant’s assertion that terror or fear controlled his actions.
CONCLUSION
The court of appeals erred to find “some harm” under
Almanza
simply because the appellant was subjected to a greater range of punishment than he would have faced had the jury been instructed on, and found in the appellant’s favor with respect to, the issue of sudden passion. We hold that the court of appeals erred in reversing the trial court’s judgment with respect to punishment. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and affirm the judgment of the trial court.