Hon. 0. B. Ellis 

General Manager 

Texas Prison System 

Huntsville, Texas 

Dear Sir:. 

AUSTIN. TEXAS 

December 15, 1949 

Opinion No. V-968 

Be: Procedure for discharging 

inmates of the Texas Prison 

System who have been declared insane and now apt 

pear sane. 

Your recent letter to this office reads, in part, as 

follows: 

y We desire the opinion of your department as 

to procedure in discharging inmates of the Texas 

Prison System who have been declared insane and 

now appear sane.- 

From your letter it appears that the inmates to whom 

this question relates were adjudged insane after they had entered prison but before the expiration of their respective sentences. 

Article 928, Vernon’s Code Criminal Procedure, which 

deals with insanity after conviction, provides: 

“If the defendant becomes sane, he shall be 

brought before the court in which he was convicted 

or before the District Court in the County in which 

the defendant is located at the time he is alleged to 

have become sane; and, a jury shall be impaneled 

in the Court before which such defendant is brought 

to try the issue of his sanity; and, if he is found to 

be sane, the conviction shall be enforced against 

him as if the proceedings had never been suspended.” 

Article 929, Vernon’s Code Criminal Procedure, autborizes the superintendent of the asylum in which the prisoner is an 

inmate to initiate restoration of sanity proceedings by presenting 

to the court a written certificate as to the inmate’s sanity. 
Hon. 0. B. Ellis, Page 2 (Opinion V-968) 

In view of Article 928 and 929, Vernon’s Code Criminal Procedure, we conclude that the superintendent of the 

asylum in which the convict is an inmate is authorized to present a written certificate as to the sanity of a convict-inmate 

to the District Court in the county where the asylum is located 

or to the court in which the inmate was c.onvicted of the crime 

for which he has been imprisoned, and thereupon the issue of 

the inmate’s sanity shall be tried. 

If the convict-inmate is adjudged sane, he should be 

removed from the asylum and reconfined in the penitentiary 

proper for the expiration of his sentence. This is the view taken 

in Attorney General’s Opinion No. O-5721, by a former administration, which has been cited with approval in Attorney General’s 

Opinion No. V-498. 

Attorney General’s Opinion No. O-5721 holds: “We are 

of the opinion that the foregoing discussion discloses a legislative policy in Texas of not subjecting insane persons to criminal punishment, and that the time spent by an insane in a state 

hospital should not be counted on his sentence as a criminal.” 

SUMMARY 

The procedure for the discharge of an inmate of 

the Texas Prison System who has been adjudged insane but now appears sane is for the superintendent 

of the asylum in which the convict is an inmate to 

present a written certificate as to the sanity of the . 

prisoner to the District Court in the county where 

the asylum is located or to the court in which the 

inmate was convicted of the crime for which he has 

been imprisoned, and if upon trial, the prisoner is 

adjudged sane, he should be removed from the asylum 

and reconfined in the penitentiary proper for the expiration of his sentence. 

Yours very truly, 

APPROVED: ATTORNEY GENERALOFTEXAS 

.-. 

PTP:v