Saunders v. State

In Saunders v. State, 817 S.W.2d 688, 689 (Tex.Crim.App. 1991) The Court indicated that a harmless error analysis for the omission of an accomplice witness instruction should be flexible, taking into account the existence and strength of any non-accomplice evidence and the applicable standard of harm. In Saunders, there was harm under this standard because the corroborating non-accomplice evidence was weak and was contradicted by other evidence. The alleged crime was arson and the corroborating evidence involved financial circumstances that seemed somewhat suspicious at first glance but were given persuasive innocent explanations. As a result, the corroborating evidence, even if believed, did not have a very strong tendency to connect the defendant to the crime. Furthermore, much of the evidence in the defendant's favor was uncontradicted, and we observed that "rational jurors may not utterly disregard undisputed evidence without a sensible basis for thinking it unreliable any more than they may simply assume a critical part of the proof without evidence having an inclination to confirm it." Id. at 693. In Saunders the unobjected-to failure to charge on accomplice witness law was reversible error, that is, egregious error. In that case we held that the "good-bit-of-corroborating-evidence" test for harm was "defunct." Saunders is a strong indication that the "good-bit of corroboration" test that the Court uses today does not apply in that way in a case in which the trial court gave no charge at all on accomplice-witness evidence.