Taylor v. State

• Decision Date: 26 January 2000
• Citation: 10 S.W.3d 673
• Parties: (Tex.Crim.App. 2000) RAYMOND TAYLOR, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS NO. 1728-98
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 673

10 S.W.3d 673 (Tex.Crim.App. 2000)

RAYMOND TAYLOR, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS

NO. 1728-98

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TEXAS

January 26, 2000

ON STATE'S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW FROM THE EIGHTH COURT OF APPEALS EL PASO COUNTY

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

Keller, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which McCormick, P.J. and Meyers, Price, Holland, Womack, Johnson, and Keasler, JJ. joined. Mansfield, J. dissented with note.

O P I N I O N

The issue presented by this case is whether our abolition of the juvenile exception to the accomplice witness rule, announced by Blake v. State, 971 S.W.2d 451 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998), applies retroactively to cases currently pending on direct review or not yet final. We hold that our holding in Blake is retroactive and affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

Appellant and his wife Josefina divorced in 1989. They were named joint managing conservators of their two children. In 1990, Josefina married John Garmon, and together they had a son. On May 3, 1996, appellant's children, ages eleven and ten at the time, set fire to the home of their mother and stepfather. Josefina, John, and their son suffered injuries but survived. In March of 1997, appellant was convicted on three counts of attempted capital murder. According to the State's theory of the case, appellant had used physical punishment and psychological pressure to manipulate his children into setting the fire with the purpose of killing his ex-wife, her husband, and their son.

At trial, appellant submitted a written accomplice witness instruction concerning the two children and requested that the instruction be included in the jury charge. The trial court failed to include the instruction. At the time, the trial court's failure to include the instruction was consistent with our cases holding that children were not covered by the accomplice witness rule. Villarreal v. State, 708 S.W.2d 845, 848-849 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986), overruled, Blake v. State, 971 S.W.2d 451 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998); see also Blake, 971 S.W.2d at 455-458 (cases discussed therein). However, we subsequently abolished the juvenile exception to the accomplice witness rule in Blake.¹

Before the Court of Appeals appellant contended, among other things, that the trial court erred in failing to submit his requested accomplice witness instruction. The Court of Appeals reversed and instructed that the case be remanded for a new trial.² Although observing that the trial court's actions were justified by the state of the law at the time, the Court of Appeals held that, in light of the subsequent holding in Blake, the trial court's failure to submit the instruction constituted error. The Court of Appeals found that the error had been properly preserved and that some harm had been shown under standards set forth in Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157 (Tex. Crim. App. 1984) and Saunders v. State, 817 S.W.2d 688 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991).

In its petition for discretionary review, the State contends that Blake should not be applied retroactively. Relying upon Geesa v. State, 820 S.W.2d 154 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991), the State contends that justice would be best served by giving the Blake rule limited prospectivity. The State contends that retroactive application of the rule would be inequitable because (1) two defendants tried on the same date could obtain different results depending upon the speed of an appellate court issuing an opinion, (2) retroactive application of the new rule increases the State's burden of proof after the case is presented and closed, and (3) retroactive application would require a jury to be charged on law that was not in effect at the time of trial. The State also asserts that "it makes more sense to allow defendants in the cases pending on direct review or not yet final to have their cases decided under the old rule than to require new trials in every case for failure to charge the jury with an instruction on accomplice witness testimony." We granted this petition to address the scope and effect of doctrines relating to the retroactivity of new rules.

I.

Under the early common law, an appellate court never created law, it simply "discovered" the law. Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 623 (1965). When an appellate court overruled one of its earlier decisions, that earlier decision "was thought to be only a failure at true discovery and was consequently never the law." Id. Conversely, the new decision, being the "accurate" discovery of the law, was not new law, but was an application of what had always in fact been the law. Id. The "discovery" view of judicial decision-making came under attack as failing to reflect the realities of an appellate court's task. Id. An alternative view held that judges fill in the blanks left by statutory law with judicial interpretation that more clearly defines the law. Id. at 624. Under this view, an earlier decision is not erased without a trace by a later, overruling one; instead, the earlier decision stands "as an existing juridical fact until overruled." Id. Hence, the overruled opinion retained vitality as to cases decided before the overruling occurred. Id.

Against this backdrop of conflicting views of judicial decision-making, the Supreme Court developed a pragmatic, case-by-case approach for new constitutional rules. Id. at 629. This approach was perhaps most clearly spelled out in Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293 (1967), which applied a three-factor test for determining whether a new rule should be given retroactive effect:

(a) the purpose to be served by the new standards,

(b) the extent of reliance by law enforcement authorities on the old standards, and

(c) the effect on the administration of justice of a retroactive application of the new standards.

Id. at 297. Nevertheless, the Court recognized that the holding in its cases would always apply to the parties in the case in which the rule is announced, because "constitutional adjudications [do] not stand as mere dictum." Id. at 301 According to the Court, "sound policies of decision-making" required that it "resolve issues solely in concrete cases or controversies," and applying a new rule in the case announcing the rule is necessary to give counsel incentive "to advance contentions requiring a change in the law." Id. Although acknowledging that some "[i]nequity arguably results from according the benefit of a new rule to the parties of the case in which it is announced but not to other litigants similarly situated in the trial or appellate process who have raised the same issue," the Court regarded "the fact that the parties involved are chance beneficiaries as an insignificant cost for the adherence to sound principles of decision-making." Id. In essence, if the factors weighed in favor of prospective application, Stovall required that the new rule be given "limited prospectivity": the new rule would be applied to the parties in the case in which the new rule was announced (a retroactive application), but the new rule would otherwise be prospective, applying only to cases in which the operative facts occurred after the adoption of the new rule.³

But the Supreme Court later repudiated the Stovall doctrine of retroactivity and its underlying rationale. Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314 (1987). The Court criticized as arbitrary the practice of "simply fishing one case from the stream of appellant review, using it as a vehicle for pronouncing new constitutional standards, and then permitting a stream of similar cases subsequently to flow by unaffected by the new rule." Id. at 323 (quoting Mackey v. United States, 401 U.S. 667, 679 (1971)(Harlan, J. concurring)). The Court also criticized limited prospectivity as inequitable, violating "the principle of treating similarly situated defendants the same." Griffith, 479 U.S. at 323 (citing Desist v. United States, 394 U.S. 244, 258-259 (1969)(Harlan, J. dissenting) and United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 556 n. 16 (1982)). Consequently, the Supreme Court held that a newly announced constitutional rule for conducting criminal prosecutions must be applied retroactively to all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final when the rule was announced. Griffith, 479 U.S. at 328.

In arriving at its holding in Griffith, the Supreme Court rejected the "clear break exception" to retroactivity that existed under prior caselaw. Under that exception, "a new constitutional rule was not applied retroactively, even to cases on direct review, if the new rule explicitly overruled a past precedent of this Court, or disapproved a practice this Court had arguably sanctioned in prior cases, or overturned a longstanding practice that lower courts had uniformly approved." Id. at 325. The Supreme Court explained that the "clear break exception" created the same problems that generally attended the use of limited prospectivity. Id. at 327.

The Supreme Court has applied a different holding to collateral review. With some narrow exceptions, new federal constitutional rules do not apply retroactively to cases that became final before the new rule was created. Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 310 (1989). The Court held that finality interests are of overriding importance. Id. at 309. Once a case becomes final, the purpose of a new rule is no longer a relevant question; instead, the only relevant question is whether applying the new rule will further the purpose for which the writ of habeas corpus is made available. Id. at 306. Because habeas corpus is designed as a tool to deter the violation of established constitutional standards, a habeas court "need only apply the constitutional standards that prevailed at the time the original proceedings took place." Id.

The Supreme Court's retroactivity analysis for federal constitutional errors is binding upon the states when federal constitutional errors are involved. James R. Beam...