Opinion
No. 0076-07
Filed: May 9, 2007. DO NOT PUBLISH.
On Appellant's Petition for Discretionary Review, appeal from the Thirteenth Court of Appeals, Harris County.
OPINION
I concur with the Court's decision to refuse appellant's petition for discretionary review. I disagree with the ultimate conclusion by the court of appeals that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in limiting defense counsel to a twenty-minute closing argument, Wooten v. State, No. 13-03-229-CR (Tex.App.-Corpus Christi November 30, 2006) (not designated for publication). But appellant could not plausibly show harm under TRAP 44.2(a) because: (1) he wanted only one more minute in which to complete his argument, (2) he failed to place on the record what additional argument he would have made, and (3) as the court of appeals noted, "[o]ne defense counsel even stated to the trial judge that argument did not assist the jury." Apparently, defense counsel did not, at the time, think that this limitation was particularly damaging to his client. Nonetheless, I am concerned about the trial court's crabbéd interpretation of the value of closing argument in focusing a jury on the relevant legal principles and evidence in a trial. This was a six-day trial. Twenty-three witnesses testified. According to the court of appeals, "almost 1000 exhibits" were introduced. But, after all this time, effort, and testimony, the trial court couldn't spare more than twenty minutes per side for closing arguments? What else is so pressingly important that a trial judge is willing to risk retrying the entire case simply to save a few minutes? Some might call this penny-wise and pound-foolish. In Dang v. State, 154 S.W.3d 616 (Tex.Crim.App. 2005), we reversed the defendant's conviction when this same trial judge limited the defense attorney's closing argument to twenty minutes. Appellant in this case claims that "declaring this act of judicial arbitrariness to be harmless would encourage the trial judge to repeat it with impunity in future cases." However this case was tried in 2003, almost two years before our decision in Dang, thus the trial judge could not have repeated his " Dang" error with impunity because he was not yet on notice that arbitrarily limiting counsel's closing arguments to twenty minutes in a complex or lengthy felony trial may well be an abuse of discretion. Trial judges are on notice now.
The court of appeals noted:
* "It is perplexing why after six days of trial and twenty-three witnesses, the trial court could not indulge the defendant one additional minute."
* "Our review of the closing argument suggests that indeed both the quantity of the evidence, including almost 1000 exhibits, and duration of the trial would suggest to most objective onlookers that the request for one more minute was not unreasonable and should have been granted."
* This panel would agree that subjectively that additional time should have been granted."
* "The trial court's actions once again precipitously approaches the outer limits of reasonableness."
I think the court of appeals is too charitable. These actions fell over the precipice and into the chasm of abuse of discretion.
Appellant's Petition at 12-13.