Luis Noe Barrios, Appellant v. the State of Texas

Summary

The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the First Court of Appeals' judgment upholding Barrios's capital-murder conviction, resolving his petition-for-review ground challenging the trial charge's 'acquittal-first' sequencing instruction. It held that the instruction telling jurors to acquit of capital murder before considering robbery does not require unanimous acquittal of the greater offense first, because unanimity attaches only to verdicts delivered to the court, the judge reads the entire charge—including the benefit-of-the-doubt instruction—before deliberations begin, and jurors may weigh the parts of the charge in any order they choose. Finding no error under the Almanza jury-charge framework, the Court did not reach the harm inquiry. Keller, P.J., concurred.