Davis v. State (1995)

In Davis v. State, 897 S.W.2d 791, 793 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995) a majority of this Court, including two judges currently sitting on this Court, held that a trial court was not authorized to enter a deadly weapon affirmative finding because there was no deadly weapon special issue included in either the guilt or punishment jury charge, and the voluntary manslaughter verdict mentioned neither a deadly weapon nor the indictment.. Yet, today, a majority of this Court now finds that the reasoning in Davis was flawed. The Court held that "deadly weapon" language in a lesser-included manslaughter application paragraph (when a defendant is indicted for committing murder with a specific deadly weapon) is not sufficient to support a deadly weapon finding when the jury returns a guilty verdict on the lesser-included offense if the verdict form does not explicitly refer to the original indictment. Davis, 897 S.W.2d at 793.