Fairfield v. State
| Decision Date | 28 January 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 65394,No. 3,65394,3 |
| Citation | 610 S.W.2d 771 |
| Parties | Richard Paul FAIRFIELD, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Laird Palmer, Austin, for appellant.
Ronald Earle, Dist. Atty. and Ralph Graham, Asst. Dist. Atty., Austin, Robert Huttash, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.
Before ROBERTS, ODOM and CLINTON, JJ.
Upon his entry of a plea of guilty before a jury, appellant was convicted for committing aggravated rape, and his punishment was assessed at forty three years confinement; from that conviction, appellant prosecutes this appeal.
In seven grounds of error, appellant complains of the trial court's refusals to, respectively, "set aside" his plea of guilty and instruct a verdict of not guilty, apply the law of venue to the facts of the case, and sustain other objections to the charge; additionally, appellant claims that the trial court included a comment on the weight of the evidence in its jury instructions and that the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction.
The record reflects that on December 3, 1979, appellant elected in writing to have his punishment assessed by a jury pursuant to Article 37.07, § 2(b), V.A.C.C.P., in order to effect his right to jury resolution of the issues involved in assessing punishment upon entry of a plea of guilty. Article 26.14, V.A.C.C.P. Thereafter, on the same day, the trial court, prior to accepting appellant's plea, admonished him in accordance with Article 26.13, V.A.C.C.P., noted that no recommendation as to punishment was to be made by the State and accepted the plea of guilty. After a jury was selected, impaneled and sworn, the indictment was read and appellant entered his plea of guilty in their presence.
Consonant with Article 26.14, supra, the State's direct evidence demonstrated the circumstances surrounding appellant's aggravated rape of W___ A___, in order to enable the jury to determine the assessment of punishment. Briefly, that evidence established that just before dark on August 15, 1979, the complainant left Highland Mall to find a tire on her car was flat and a note on her windshield to that effect. Commencing to change her tire, complainant noticed a man, later identified as appellant, and a woman, walking toward her. After initially declining, complainant allowed appellant to finish changing the tire, and in response to a request by the woman with appellant, complainant agreed to give the couple a ride. It was later established that the tire on complainant's car had merely been deflated.
Complainant, who had lived in Austin only three months, drove according to appellant's instructions and was directed to stop at a house in a north Austin neighborhood where the other woman got out. Appellant then advised complainant that he would need a ride "about three miles" further, toward Manor, and told complainant to just follow his instructions; appellant continued to direct her down ranch and other secluded rural roads, some gravel, southeast of Austin. By this time it was dark, and complainant had begun to be afraid. After approximately an hour and a half of driving and conversing, appellant pulled a pistol out of a paper bag which had been handed him by his female companion shortly before she was let out of the car. He instructed complainant to stop the car, which she did. Appellant led her to a creekbed where he forced complainant to remove her clothing; he penetrated her vagina with his penis, then began to beat her with the butt of his pistol.
After appellant had hit complainant several times, she was able to put most of her clothes back on, but he started beating her again. Finally, appellant choked complainant who decided to "play dead," and she in fact lost consciousness but was awakened by another blow to the head. When she remained still, appellant left, walking back to the road where he left in her car. In spite of her several injuries, including "scalp" and face wounds to the skull, complainant made her way about a mile to a house where the occupants summoned Bastrop County authorities.
Testimony established that the rape was actually committed in Bastrop County, approximately a mile and one half from the Travis County line. Bastrop County law enforcement witnesses were unable to cite with certainty exactly how the county line ran between Travis and Bastrop Counties in much of the vicinity where appellant directed complainant to drive on the night of the offense.
The next day, all testimony was concluded and after both sides had rested, appellant filed written objections to the court's jury charge, 3 which were overruled; defense counsel then stated that he had another motion to make outside the presence of the jury which was dictated to the court reporter thus:
"(Defendant) moves the Court to set aside his plea of guilty and instruct this jury to acquit the Defendant and find him not guilty."
In support of this "motion," appellant argued that, notwithstanding the fact that by entry of his guilty plea before the jury he had "admitted all of the facts charged ... in the indictment," the burden was nevertheless on the State to adduce "evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of the essential elements of the offense charged;" that "venue" is an "essential element" of the offense which the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt; that the uncontroverted evidence demonstrated that the offense occurred in Bastrop County; and thus, because the State had failed to prove the "element" of venue, "the Defendant, regardless of his plea, is entitled to an instructed verdict of not guilty."
On appeal, the merit of all of appellant's contentions are inextricably tied to our determination of the merit of the first whether the trial court erred in failing to "set aside" appellant's plea of guilty? The State, apparently conceding that the trial court should have set aside the plea, argues that the error was not harmful because evidence of appellant's guilt was overwhelming; therefore, says the State, no reversal should result. For the part of this Court, our attention has been seized by the remarkably misconceived legal arguments advanced by the parties in this cause, both at trial and before this Court; we therefore deem it a prerequisite to resolution of this appeal, that the law governing pleas of guilty and its relationship to the right to trial by jury in this State, be placed in context.
For historical reasons discussed in Thornton v. State, 601 S.W.2d 340 (Tex.Cr.App.1980) () it was an alien notion in both the days of the Republic and the early days of statehood that a citizen be convicted of a felony offense other than by verdict of a jury, there being no procedural method whatever for waiver of jury in the trial of a felony until 1931. 4
Before a jury, the plea of guilty was early on characterized as "the acknowledgment of the facts charged," Crow v. State, 6 Tex. 334 (1851), and, though not amounting to waiver and release of all errors like a confession of judgment, its civil counterpart, id., "a plea of guilty to a felony charge before a jury admits the existence of all facts necessary to establish guilt." This still viable precept has been most recently relied on in Turnspeed and Howard v. State, 609 S.W.2d 798 (Tex.Cr.App. 1980).
Concomitant to the above was the observation that in a guilty plea proceeding before a jury because the plea established the facts alleged by indictment "(the trial court) could assume as a fact the guilt of (the defendant)" and "(t)he question of reasonable doubt as to his guilt ... did not arise." Warren v. State, 68 S.W. 275, 276 (Tex.Cr.App.1902). 5
In view of the conclusive effect of the entry of a guilty plea before the jury for evidentiary purposes on the issue of guilt, the Court was eventually called upon to determine whether a defendant's expressed desire to withdraw that plea and to enter a plea of not guilty, would reinvoke the power of the jury to arbitrate the issue of guilt, or restated, act as a revocation of his waiver of trial by jury. The Court's unequivocal reply, enunciated in Alexander v. State, 69 Tex.Cr.R. 23, 152 S.W. 436, 437 (1912), was as follows:
"We want to say, and emphasize the fact that at any time before the retirement of the jury a person on trial would have the right to withdraw a plea of guilty, and put upon the State the burden of proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
Thus, the vehicle for reimposing the State's burden of proof on the issue of guilt was established: Since the plea of guilty withdraws "guilt" as a fact question from the case, a defendant need only remove that impediment in order to place his guilt or innocence in issue for jury resolution, by withdrawing it and entering a plea of not guilty. And "the...
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