Lane v. State

In Lane v. State 743 S.W.2d 617 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987), the hypothetical stated that a capital murder could occur if the defendant fired a shot at the ceiling and the bullet ricocheted and hit the victim. Lane, 743 S.W.2d at 622. But intentionally firing a shot at the ceiling does not demonstrate the "intentional murder" component of capital murder; instead, the hypothetical demonstrated an offense that was, at most, felony murder. Id. at 627. Every prospective juror who had difficulty distinguishing between the terms "intentional" and "deliberate" was given the faulty hypothetical as an illustration. Id. at 627. After exhausting his peremptory challenges and requesting more, the defendant was unable to prevent one of these prospective jurors from sitting on the jury. Id. at 629. The Court found that "the harm is evident." In Lane v. State 933 S.W.2d 504 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996), a plurality of this Court construed the word "provided" and held that actual delivery of the recording was unnecessary - defense counsel was provided with the recording when it was made available to him. 933 S.W.2d at 516. The opinion turned to whether counsel had been provided the recording in a timely fashion. It held that the defense counsel procedurally defaulted any claim that the recording was not provided within twenty days of the pretrial hearing because he failed to object on that basis at the pretrial hearing. The plurality remarked that, had he objected, "he may have been entitled to a twenty-day continuance of the hearing to examine copies of the recordings." In Lane, the Court indicated that the purpose of the statute can guide interpretation of ambiguous language, but the above discussion shows that applying the twenty-day requirement to pretrial hearings actually furthers the purpose of giving the defendant adequate notice to prepare a challenge to the evidence and to conduct plea negotiations. And in fact, Lane recognized the possibility, albeit in dicta, of the twenty-day provision applying to pretrial hearings. Id. at 516.