Unkart v. Texas (Original)
Annotate this CaseDuring voir dire, the trial judge said that he personally would want to testify if accused of a crime but admonished the prospective jurors that others might have a different perspective, that a defendant could have good reasons not to testify that were unrelated to guilt, and that the law prohibited the jurors from holding a defendant's failure to testify against him. Defense counsel belatedly requested a mistral but did not ask for an instruction to disregard the trial judge's comments. Holding that the comments constituted fundamental error, the court of appeals reversed the conviction. Upon review of the case, the Supreme Court disagreed with the court of appeals' conclusion that the trial judge's comments constituted fundamental error. Furthermore, the Court concluded that appellant's request for a mistrial did not preserve error because any harm flowing from error in this case could have been cured by an instruction to disregard and in fact was cured by the totality of the trial judge's instructions. Accordingly the appellate court was reverse and the case remanded for further proceedings.
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