Plata v. State

• Decision Date: 26 June 1996
• Docket Number: No. 0480-94,0480-94
• Citation: 926 S.W.2d 300
• Parties: Luis Alberto PLATA, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 300

926 S.W.2d 300

Luis Alberto PLATA, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 0480-94.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

June 26, 1996.

Luis Alberto Plata, Lockhart, pro se.

Angel Castro, Brownsville, for appellant.

John A. Olson, Asst. Dist. Atty., Brownsville, Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

OPINION ON STATE'S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

MEYERS, Judge.

Appellant and a codefendant were convicted of theft in a single trial for stealing money from an armored cash delivery vehicle. Apparently, the money was actually taken and removed from the vehicle by appellant's codefendant, acting alone but using a car borrowed by appellant for that purpose from his sister earlier the same day. Although there is ample evidence to suggest that appellant participated in planning this offense, that he aided and possibly even solicited his codefendant to commit it, there is virtually nothing in the record to prove that appellant stole the money himself or actually received any of it after it was stolen.

Nevertheless, our law provides that "a person is criminally responsible for an offense committed by the conduct of another if ... acting with intent to promote or assist the commission of the offense, he solicits, encourages, directs, aids, or attempts to aid the other person to commit the offense[.]" Penal Code § 7.02(a)(2). Because each party to an offense, including those who are criminally responsible for the conduct of others, may be charged with committing the offense themselves, it is clear that sufficient evidence was adduced at trial to prove appellant guilty of theft on account of the supervision he exercised and assistance he provided to his codefendant. Penal Code § 7.01. But, while the court's charge in this cause did tell the jurors in general terms of the conditions under which a person may be criminally responsible for another's conduct, it also expressly admonished them not to convict appellant unless they unanimously found beyond reasonable doubt that both he and his codefendant actually appropriated the stolen money by exercising control over it.

On the basis of these instructions, the Thirteenth Court of Appeals concluded that, taken as a whole, the court's charge did not authorize the jury to convict appellant for assisting his codefendant in the commission of the crime. Relying on our opinions in Walker v. State, 823 S.W.2d 247 (Tex.Crim.App.1991) and Jones v. State, 815 S.W.2d 667 (Tex.Crim.App.1991), the Court held that jurors are not at liberty to convict an accused under an abstract theory of law contained in the court's charge unless the charge also includes an instruction applying that theory to the facts of the case and expressly authorizing the jury to return a verdict of guilty upon finding that the conditions of culpability given by the theory have been proven. Because the application paragraph of the trial court's charge in this case did not include, either directly or by reference, the elements necessary for proof that appellant was vicariously culpable, and because the evidence did not show that appellant committed the offense of theft by his own conduct, the Court of Appeals reversed his conviction and remanded the cause for an acquittal. Plata v. State, 875 S.W.2d 344 (Tex.App.--Corpus Christi 1994).

In its petition for discretionary review, the State argues that the Court of Appeals misinterpreted our opinions in Walker and Jones and that its disposition is inconsistent with our more recent opinion in Chatman v. State, 846 S.W.2d 329 (Tex.Crim.App.1993). It contends that the application paragraph in this case did include a reference to the abstract instruction on the law of vicarious culpability sufficient for rational jurors to understand that they were authorized to convict appellant upon finding that he was criminally responsible under the law for the alleged theft committed by the conduct of his codefendant. We granted discretionary review to clarify the connection under our precedents between definitional instructions and application instructions in the context of vicarious criminal responsibility.

Over the years, this Court has struggled to maintain a workable relationship between the abstract parts of a jury charge and those parts which apply the abstract law to the facts of the case. This struggle has not always been perfectly successful, but it has managed to produce a reasonably stable balance between two potentially inconsistent propositions: (1) that the meaning of a jury charge should be taken from the whole charge, not just from a certain few instructions read in isolation; and (2) that jurors are not authorized to return a verdict except under those conditions given by the application paragraph of the charge. To harmonize these two important principles, we have held that abstract or definitional paragraphs serve as a kind of glossary to help the jury understand the meaning of concepts and terms used in the application paragraphs of the charge. See, e.g., Dinkins v. State, 894 S.W.2d 330, 339 (Tex.Crim.App.1995)(omission of a culpable mental state from the application paragraph was sufficiently supplied by a definition of the offense given in the abstract portion of charge).

From this relationship, it follows that superfluous abstractions, those not necessary to an understanding of concepts or terms contained in the application paragraph, are generally innocuous. Reversible error only occurs in the giving of an abstract instruction when the instruction is an incorrect or misleading statement of a law which the jury must understand in order to implement the commands of the application paragraph. Riley v. State, 830 S.W.2d 584, (Tex.Crim.App.1992)(confusing conflict between abstract and application paragraphs on burden of proof concerning insanity was reversible error); Sandig v. State, 580 S.W.2d 584, 586 (Tex.Crim.App.1979)(overly broad definition of "sexual contact" in abstract instruction was reversible error because it authorized conviction on unalleged theory when read in combination with application paragraph of charge). Likewise, failure to give an abstract instruction is reversible only when such an instruction is necessary to a correct or complete understanding of concepts or terms in the application part of the charge. MacDougall v. State, 702 S.W.2d 650 (Tex.Crim.App.1986)(failure to include definition of "deception" in abstract portion of the charge was reversible error where State's theory of conviction depended on proof of theft by deception and elements of deception were not included in the application paragraph); Meanes v. State, 668 S.W.2d 366, 374-75 (Tex.Crim.App.1983)(failure to give abstract instruction defining capital murder was not error where constituent elements of murder were set forth at length in the application paragraph). The inclusion of a merely superfluous abstraction, therefore, never produces reversible error in the court's charge because it has no effect on the jury's ability fairly and accurately to implement the commands of the application paragraph or paragraphs. Hughes v. State, 897 S.W.2d 285, 297 (Tex.Crim.App.1994)(no error in giving superfluous abstract instruction on causation when the issue of causation was not incorporated into the application paragraph); Lewis v. State, 815 S.W.2d 560, 562 (Tex.Crim.App.1991)(no error in giving superfluous abstract instruction on transferred intent when the issue of transferred intent was not incorporated into the application paragraph).

None of this law makes any sense unless every jury charge is required to contain at least one application paragraph, and every conviction not expressly authorized by an application paragraph is considered to be voidable. See Williams v. State, 547 S.W.2d 18, 20 (Tex.Crim.App.1977)("It is not sufficient for the jury to receive an abstract instruction on the law and then to render a verdict according to a general conclusion on whether the law has been violated.") Were we to ratify the State's position in this case, however, it would dramatically undermine these principles by holding that an abstract instruction on the law of parties which did not define or elaborate any concepts or terms in the application paragraph was itself available to the jury as an independent basis for convicting appellant.

In the instant cause, the only paragraph included in the court's charge which expressly described the conditions under which the jury should convict or acquit appellant was, with relevant parts emphasized, as follows.

Now if you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that on or about the 18th day of October, 1991, in Cameron County, Texas, the Defendants, Eloy Hinojosa and Luis Alberto Plata, did unlawfully approriate [sic] United States Currency without the effective consent of Felipe Landin, the owner, with intent to deprive the said owner of said property permanently, and that the value of such property was then and there twenty thousand dollars ($20,000.00) or more and under the value of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00), then you will find the defendants guilty of theft as charged in the indictment.

Unless you so find beyond a reasonable doubt, or if you have a reasonable doubt thereof, you will acquit the defendants.

Far from authorizing the conviction of either defendant for assisting the other to appropriate property, as the State suggests, this instruction rather plainly on its face directed the jurors to acquit both appellant and his codefendant unless they found that each actually appropriated the property himself. The court's charge then went on, several paragraphs later, to describe in the abstract, without authorizing the jury to convict or acquit, some of the statutory conditions under which one person may be criminally responsible for another person's conduct.

All persons are parties to an offense who are guilty of acting together in the commission of the offense. A person is...