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991 S.W.2d 803

McGowen v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas

Decided October 28, 1998

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · decided 1998-10-28

Relies on Cain v. State · McGowen v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1998-10-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently March 2016

6 state decisions

40199820002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1 OPINION ON STATE’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

PER CURIAM.

¶2 Appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to confinement for fifteen years. The Court of Appeals reversed the conviction because the trial court refused Appellant’s request to make an opening statement, and it held this error is not subject to a harm analysis. McGowen v. State, 944 S.W.2d 481 (Tex.App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1997).

¶3 The State filed a petition for discretionary review. In ground two of its petition, the State argues the Court of Appeals erred by failing to conduct a harm analysis. At the time the Court of Appeals handed down its opinion, it did not have the benefit of our decision in Cain v. State, 947 S.W.2d 262 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). In Cain, this Court held, “Except for certain federal constitutional errors labeled by the United States Supreme Court as ‘structural,’ no error, whether it relates to jurisdiction, voluntariness of a plea, or any other mandatory requirement, is categorically immune to a harmless error analysis.” Id. at 264.

¶4 Accordingly, we grant ground two of the State’s petition, vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remand the cause to that court for reconsideration in light of Cain. Ground one of the State’s petition is refused.

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