Taylor v. State

¶1dissenting.

¶2“A person is criminally responsible as a party to an offense if the offense is committed by his own conduct, by the conduct of another for which he is criminally responsible, or by both.”1 An essential element of burglary of a habitation as a party or as a principal is that the offense was committed either by the other person or by the defendant.

¶3The trial court is obligated to charge the jury on the “law applicable to the case.”2 This obligation requires the court to instruct the jury concerning each and every element of the offense.3 The court’s charge, rather than merely stating abstract propositions of law and general principles contained in the statutes, must clearly apply the law to the very facts of the case.4 As our sister court in Dallas has pointed out,

While the law of parties makes an accused criminally responsible, under some circumstances, for the conduct of another, see section 7.02, it does not alter the definition of the conduct constituting an offense. On the contrary, the language in section 7.02, making an accused vicariously responsible for aiding another “to commit the offense,” still requires conduct constituting an offense plus an intentional act by the accused to promote or assist such conduct.5

¶4A jury charge may not authorize a conviction on less evidence than the law requires.6 Nor can either the indictment or the general statements of law supply the elements omitted from the application paragraph.7

¶5In the case now before this court, the application paragraph instructed the jury to convict if they found Appellant had acted as a principal or that Appellant, acting with the specific intent to promote or assist a burglary, had solicited, encouraged, directed, aided, or attempted to aid Kristina Holland. The jury, however, was not required to find that Kristina Holland or anyone else had actually committed the burglary in the parties application. For this reason, I would hold that the trial court erred in submitting the improper charge to the jury and in allowing conviction on less evidence than required by law. I, therefore, respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.