Is it time to disband the CCA?
Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast recently addressed the question of whether the Court of Criminal Appeals should be consolidated with the Supreme Court. The post actually was addressed to Florida, which is considering following the Texas model and establishing a separate court to consider criminal cases. Scott's advise - don't do it.
Scott believes the CCA has become a "results oriented" court. They decide in the State's favor, and then craft a reason to support. As he describes far better than I could:
At the CCA, often the point of their rulings seems to be affirming their activist proclivities, picking which side they think should win (the state) then constructing often strained, convoluted justifications to support their desired outcome.
Shortly after reading Scott's post I was reviewing recent decisions, and came across one that could be exhibit A for his argument. The case is Sherry L ynn Smith v. State. Mrs. Smith was charged with murdering her husband and his father - supposedly for property and money. Prior to the murder she had revived a relationship with her ex-husband, who was also charged with capital murder. Apparently not having the same feelings for his former wife the ex-husband testified against her. The capital murder charge was dismissed, and he plead guilty to tampering with evidence; his sentence - 2 years, which would run concurrently with a felony theft conviction. He had been in jail for 20 months, so basically it was time served deal. Not bad for someone facing life in prison or the death penalty.
Texas has what is called the accomplice witness rule. Basically, that means that if an accomplice testifies for the State there must be something more than the accomplice testimony that connects the defendant to the crime. Legislators apparently understood that criminals are not always honest, and might tend to fudge on the facts when it would help them out.
Generally, when two witnesses are charged with the same offense they are accomplices as a matter of law - makes sense to believe that if you are both charged with the same offense you did it together. However, the Court dodged that question - as did the trial court. The Court of Appeals looked at the record and concluded the obvious that the capital murder charge was dismissed in return for his testimony, and therefore he was an accomplice. Why they didn't rely solely on the fact that they were both charged with the same offense is beyond me. As it turns out, that was a mistake, because the ex-husband never explicitly stated the charge was dismissed in return for his agreement to testify.
The CCA seized on that, and held that "without any concrete evidence" that the charge was dismissed in return for the testimony, the ex-husband was not an accomplice as a matter of law. Seriously.
Setting aside the question of what difference is makes whether the dismissal was in return for testimony or not - you either are an accomplice or not - you have to throw logic out the door to reach that result. What would the alternative explanation be? They made a mistake when they charged him with capital murder, and there wasn't really any evidence. Or perhaps they charged him without any evidence in order to convince him to cooperate. And then there is the actual deal - he basically got time served instead of life in prison. I don't know many criminals who wouldn't throw their own mother under the bus for that kind of deal - whether either one was guilty or not.
As Scott points out, this is not the first time the Court has abandoned logic to reach the desired result. You have to wonder whether they think people actually accept their reasoning, or maybe they just don't care. Whatever the reason, it certainly doesn't do much to repair the hits the court's reputation has taken over the last few years.
I haven't really thought about it before, but Scott may be right. At the very least, the time has come to look at whether dividing appellate review is something we want to continue to do.
