Second Court of Appeals | Case Summaries

Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued – Week of May 1, 2006

NOTE: Summaries are prepared by the court's staff attorneys and law clerks for public information only and reflect his or her interpretation alone of the facts and legal issues. The summaries are not part of the court's opinion in the case and should not be cited to, quoted, or relied upon as the opinion of the court.

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Stringer v. State, No. 02-0005-111 (May 4, 2006) (Walker, J., joined by Holman, J.; Dauphinot, J., dissents with opinion).: Held: The trial court did not err by admitting testimonial portions of the pre-sentence investigation report during the punishment phase of Appellant’s trial because Appellant knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently signed an admonishment waiving his right to a jury trial at both the guilt-innocence and punishment stages of trial and waiving his right to confront and cross-examine witnesses. We follow our prior decision in Rosalez v. State, No. 02-04-363-CR, 2006 WL 349736, at *1-3 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Feb. 16, 2006, no pet.), where we held that a defendant who signed substantially similar waivers to those that Appellant signed waived his Sixth Amendment right to confront and cross-examine witnesses at the sentencing hearing.; Dissent: The trial court reversibly erred by admitting during the punishment phase the testimonial portions of the presentence investigation report (PSI) accusing Appellant of extraneous acts of misconduct because (1) Appellant’s waiver of his rights to appearance, confrontation, and cross-examination of the witnesses before he entered his guilty plea did not expressly waive those rights at punishment; (2) Appellant‘s requesting the PSI did not waive his objections to evidence contained therein; (3) Appellant preserved his confrontation objection in the trial court; and (4) the State emphasized the extraneous acts in its closing argument.