## Facts

- Peter Alan Werner was convicted of murder after fatally shooting Tarbell Griffin Travis in Houston.
- On April 1, 1982, Werner left work late at night, bought beer, and went to the home of his friend, Kenneth Netterville.
- Werner witnessed Travis’s car speed onto the street, swerve, collide with Netterville’s parked vehicle, then back out and leave quickly.
- Netterville handed Werner a pistol, urged pursuit (“Let’s go get him”), and directed Werner where to drive.
- Werner found Travis’s car stopped on another street, where Travis and passenger John Christensen were checking damage.
- Werner parked alongside, exited with a flashlight and the pistol, and confronted Travis; Werner then shot Travis, who died from the wound.
- At trial, Werner claimed self-defense and sought to introduce testimony from two police officers and a psychiatrist concerning Werner’s mental condition at the time of the offense, including a proposed “Holocaust survivors’ syndrome,” to explain his perceptions and reactions.
- The trial court excluded that mental-condition testimony as irrelevant; the court of appeals affirmed, and Werner sought discretionary review.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Tex. Penal Code § 19.06, evidence about Werner’s mental condition at the time of the killing—including “Holocaust survivors’ syndrome”—was relevant and admissible as a surrounding circumstance supporting self-defense.
2. Whether Tex. Penal Code § 1.07(31)’s definition of “reasonable belief” (“ordinary and prudent person in the same circumstances as the actor”) permits individualized psychological-syndrome evidence to shape the reasonableness inquiry in self-defense.
3. Whether precedent (including McClure v. State and Wagner v. State) required admission of the proffered syndrome and mental-condition evidence.

## Decision

- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals and left Werner’s murder conviction and 10-year sentence intact.
- The court held the trial court did not err by excluding the proffered testimony concerning Werner’s mental condition and “Holocaust survivors’ syndrome.”
- The court concluded the excluded evidence was not relevant to a material issue under Texas homicide and self-defense law and did not alter the governing “reasonable belief” standard.

## Legal Principles

- Tex. Penal Code § 19.06 permits admission of relevant surrounding circumstances of a killing, but it does not authorize admission of psychological-theory evidence that lacks a sufficient connection to a material issue defined by statute.
- For self-defense, “reasonable belief” under Tex. Penal Code § 1.07(31) is measured by an ordinary-and-prudent-person standard; “circumstances” primarily refer to external situational facts rather than an actor’s idiosyncratic psychological makeup.
- Absent a specific statutory basis (such as the insanity defense), Texas does not allow expert psychological “syndrome” evidence to convert self-defense into a subjective standard or to function as a general diminished-capacity theory.
- Evidence may be excluded as irrelevant when its primary effect would be to invite the jury to judge the defendant’s conduct by a personalized reasonableness test not recognized by Texas law.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed Werner’s murder conviction, holding that proposed “Holocaust survivors’ syndrome” and related mental-condition testimony was irrelevant to self-defense because Texas evaluates “reasonable belief” largely by an objective ordinary-person standard and does not admit syndrome evidence to create a diminished-capacity-style defense absent statutory authorization.


Werner v. State, 711 S.W.2d 639 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986) (en banc)