Miles v. State

• Decision Date: 25 October 2006
• Docket Number: No. PD-0436-05.,PD-0436-05.
• Citation: 204 S.W.3d 822
• Parties: Opal Kate MILES, a/k/a Kate O. Miles, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 822

204 S.W.3d 822 Opal Kate MILES, a/k/a Kate O. Miles, Appellant
v.
The STATE of Texas. No. PD-0436-05. Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas. October 25, 2006.

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Timothy A. Hootman, Houston, for appellant.

Shirley Cornelius, Asst. D.A., Houston, Matthew Paul, State's Attorney, Austin, for state.

HOLCOMB, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KELLER, P.J., and MEYERS, PRICE, WOMACK, KEASLER, HERVEY, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

We granted appellant's petition for discretionary review in order to determine whether the court of appeals erred in its harmless-error review. We hold that the court of appeals did not err.

Our discussion begins with a summary of the relevant facts. In May 2002, a Harris County grand jury returned an indictment charging appellant with felony aggregated theft under Texas Penal Code §§ 31.03(a) and 31.09. In August 2003, the State brought appellant to trial before a petit jury on her plea of not guilty. At the guilt stage of that trial, the State presented nine witnesses and numerous exhibits, and appellant presented eight witnesses and a few exhibits.

The State's evidence at the guilt stage, if believed, established the following: From September 1997 through February 2000, appellant was employed as the bookkeeper for Hope Village, a private residential community for mentally retarded children, in Friendswood. Appellant's duties included managing all of Hope Village's finances, including its payroll. During the period in question, appellant, without authorization from her superiors, awarded herself a substantial retroactive pay raise, numerous paychecks in addition to the ones to which she was regularly entitled, and numerous checks in "reimbursement" for expenditures she never actually made. Appellant also failed, on many occasions, to make the proper deductions from her pay for federal taxes and health insurance. An independent audit conducted in 1999 revealed that appellant had misappropriated, altogether, more than $50,000 of Hope Village's funds.

Appellant's only significant defensive evidence at the guilt stage was her own testimony, in which she denied any wrongdoing. In particular, appellant insisted that her superior at Hope Village had authorized her retroactive pay raise as well as certain unspecified "bonuses," that the "reimbursement" checks had all been legitimate, and that she had "always paid [her] withholding." Appellant could not explain much of the evidence against her, however.

During appellant's closing argument at the guilt stage, the following transpired:

Defense Counsel: One thing I do want to remind you of at this time is that there is a presumption of innocence throughout the trial. At this point in time, by law, my client is presumed to be innocent. And that—

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The State: Judge, I'm going to object to that. Not after the trial's over, I wouldn't think. That's the presumption before the trial starts.

The Court: Sustained.

Defense Counsel: Well, this jury has not rendered its verdict. And until you render [your] verdict, that presumption of innocence, I render [sic] to you, is in effect.

The State: I object to that as not being a proper statement of the law.

The Court: Sustained. Let's move on.

The trial court's written charge to the jury at the guilt stage included the following admonition:

"A Grand Jury indictment is the means whereby a defendant is brought to trial in a felony prosecution. It is not evidence of guilt nor can it be considered by you in passing upon the question of guilt of the defendant. The burden of proof in all criminal cases rests upon the State throughout the trial and never shifts to the defendant.

"All persons are presumed to be innocent and no person may be convicted of an offense unless each element of the offense is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that she has been arrested, confined, or indicted for, or otherwise charged with the offense gives rise to no inference of guilt at her trial. The law does not require a defendant to prove her innocence or produce any evidence at all. The presumption of innocence alone is sufficient to acquit the defendant, unless the jurors are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt after careful and impartial consideration of all the evidence in the case.

"The prosecution has the burden of proving the defendant guilty and it must do so by proving each and every element of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt and if it fails to do so, you must acquit the defendant."

After deliberating, the jury found appellant guilty as charged in the indictment. The jury later assessed appellant's punishment at imprisonment for nine years and a fine of $2,500.

On direct appeal, appellant argued that she had been denied due process of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, by reason of the trial court's ruling sustaining the State's objection concerning the presumption of innocence. In particular, appellant argued that the trial court's ruling effectively instructed the jury that, at the close of the evidence, she was no longer presumed innocent. With its ruling, appellant's argument continued, "the trial [court] effectively commented on the weight of the evidence, saying that, yes, indeed, the evidence was strong enough to overcome the presumption that appellant was innocent."

The court of appeals agreed with appellant that the trial court had erred, but the court of appeals held that the error had been harmless beyond a reasonable doubt:

"In this case, the trial court committed [constitutional] error when it sustained the State's objection regarding the presumption of innocence. According to the precedent laid out in McGrew [v. State, 140 Tex.Crim. 77, 143 S.W.2d 946, 946-947 (1940),] and later followed in Massey [v. State, 154 Tex.Crim. 263, 226 S.W.2d 856, 860 (1950)], the presumption of innocence does not end when the presentation of evidence closes....

* * *

"... Any harm from the [trial] court's error with regard to the presumption of innocence would have been lessened, if not altogether erased, both by the [jury] charge and by the presumption that the jury followed the instructions in the jury charge.

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* * *

"Taking into account both the evidence presented against the appellant and the fact that the jury had already been charged [correctly] as to the presumption of innocence, we can say beyond a reasonable doubt that the error committed by the trial court did not contribute to the appellant's conviction. We therefore affirm the judgment of the trial court." Miles v. State, 154 S.W.3d 679, 680-683 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2004).

In a motion for rehearing, appellant, citing Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993), argued that the trial court's error had been "structural" and, therefore, not subject to harmless-error review. Her argument proceeded as follows:

"The error in this case is akin to a deficient reasonable doubt instruction [like the one in Sullivan] because the trial court [in effect] instructed the jury that...