Lopez v. State

• Decision Date: 11 November 1964
• Docket Number: No. 35267,35267
• Citation: 384 S.W.2d 345
• Parties: Pedro Camacho LOPEZ, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 345

384 S.W.2d 345

Pedro Camacho LOPEZ, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 35267.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Nov. 11, 1964.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 16, 1964.

Joseph Chacon, San Antonio, Carlos C. Cadena, San Antonio, for appellant.

James E. Barlow, Dist. Atty., San Antonio, and Leon B. Douglas, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.

McDONALD, Judge.

Appellant was convicted of the offense of murder and his punishment fixed by the jury at confinement in the state penitentiary for life. On appeal, appellant's case was affirmed by this Court, Tex.Cr.App., 366 S.W.2d 587. A petition for certiorari was filed with the Supreme Court of the United States on several grounds, including alleged constitutional deprivation of due process because of coercion in the method of obtaining appellant's confession. An alleged constitutional violation for failure to take the appellant before a magistrate at the time of his arrest was also charged. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in this cause and vacated the decision of this Court, on June 22, 1964, by a per curiam opinion, remanded the case to this Court for 'further proceedings not inconsistent with the opinion of this Court in [No. 62] Jackson v. Denno , 84 S.Ct. 1774 .' This action was taken in a memorandum decision which appears at 378 U.S. 567, 84 S.Ct.1924, 12 L.Ed.2d 1038.

The case was set for submission, briefs were filed and oral arguments made before this Court. Attorneys for both the appellant and the State have favored us with able briefs and given us the benefit of forceful oral arguments.

Appellant's counsel takes the position that this Court must reverse the judgment of the trial court and remand this cause for a new trial.

It is the position of the State that we should remand the case to the trial court for a hearing by the trial judge on the admissibility of the confession already considered by the convicting jury.

In order to fully understand the position of the parties and their respective contentions and also the position of this Court, we must now discuss Jackson v. Denno.

Nathaniel Jackson, petitioner, filed a petition against Wilfred Denno, Warden, for the writ of habeas corpus in the Federal District Court of New York asserting that his conviction for murder in the New York courts was invalid because it was founded upon a confession not properly determined to be voluntary. The writ was denied, the Court of Appeals affirmed, and he was granted certiorari by the United States Supreme Court to consider fundamental questions about the constitutionality of the New York procedure governing the admissibility of a confession alleged to be involuntary, the Supreme Court reversed saying:

'In our view, the New York procedure employed in this case did not afford a reliable determination of the voluntariness of the confession offered in evidence at the trial, did not adequately protect Jackson's right to be free of a conviction based upon a coerced confession and therefore cannot withstand constitutional attack under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We therefore reverse the judgment below denying the writ of habeas corpus.'

'This procedure has a significant impact upon the defendant's Fourteenth Amendment rights. In jurisdictions following the orthodox rule, under which the judge himself solely and finally determines the voluntariness of the confession, or those following the Massachusetts procedure, under which the jury passes on voluntariness only after the judge has fully and independently resolved the issue against the accused, the judge's conclusions are clearly evident from the record since he either admits the confession into evidence if it is voluntary or rejects it if involuntary. Moreover, his findings upon disputed issues of fact are expressly stated or may be ascertainable from the record. In contrast, the New York jury returns only a general verdict upon the ultimate question of guilt or innocence. It is impossible to discover whether the jury found the confession voluntary and relied upon it, or involuntary and supposedly ignored it. Nor is there and indication of how the jury resolved disputes in the evidence concerning the critical facts underlying the coercion issue. Indeed, there is nothing to show that these matters were resolved at all, one way or the other.'

The Court then stated:

'Jackson's trial did not comport with constitutional standards and he is entitled to a determination of the voluntariness of his confession in the state courts in accordance with valid state procedures.'

The Court went on to say that New York should provide Jackson with an adequate evidentiary hearing productive of reliable results concerning the voluntariness of his confession.

The Court then concluded that '[i]t is both practical and desirable that in cases to be tried hereafter a proper determination of voluntariness be made prior to the admission of the confession to the jury which is adjudicating guilt or innocence.'

The Supreme Court further points out in Jackson v. Denno the distinguishment between the...