In The 

Court of Appeals 

Seventh District of Texas at Amarillo

No. 07-13-00229-CR 

MICHAEL DEWAYNE JEFFERSON, APPELLANT 

 

V. 

 

THE STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLEE 

 

On Appeal from the 396th District Court 

Tarrant County, Texas 

Trial Court No. 1274891D, Honorable George W. Gallagher, Presiding 

 

November 20, 2013 

 

MEMORANDUM OPINION 

 

Before QUINN, C.J., and HANCOCK and PIRTLE, JJ. 

Michael Dewayne Jefferson was convicted of theft in an amount of $100,000 or 

more but less than $200,000, which is a second degree felony. He pled guilty without a 

recommendation as to punishment. The trial court deferred the adjudication of his guilt 

and placed him on community supervision for four years. The State later moved twice 

to have appellant's guilt adjudicated. The first motion resulted in the terms of 

appellant's probation being modified. The second one, however, was granted after 
2

appellant pled true to one allegation. At that point, the trial court convicted appellant of 

the crime mentioned above and levied sentence.

Appellant’s appointed counsel filed a motion to withdraw, together with an 

Anders1brief, wherein he certified that, after diligently searching the record, the appeal 

was without merit. Along with his brief, appellate counsel filed a copy of a letter sent to 

appellant informing him of counsel’s belief that there was no reversible error and of 

appellant’s right to file a response pro se. By letter, this court also notified appellant of 

his right to file his own brief or response, which he has done. Appellant filed such a 

response wherein he alleged various matters. Those matters included complaints about 

his being victimized by a white supremacist group, his lack of privacy, and his being 

convicted of theft as opposed to simply operating another's motor vehicle without 

permission. 

We conducted our own review of the record to assess 1) the accuracy of 

appellate counsel’s conclusions and 2) whether appellant's own response raised issues 

of arguable merit. Such is required by In re Schulman, 252 S.W.3d 403 (Tex. Crim. 

App. 2008) and Stafford v. State, 813 S.W.2d 508 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991). As for 

appellate counsel's representations, we generally found them accurate. As for 

appellant's complaints, we found them without evidentiary support in the record before 

us, and we are bound by the contents of same. See Whitehead v. State, 130 S.W.3d 

866, 872 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004). 

However, we did discover that appellant had been treated as an indigent and had 

been assigned appointed counsel. At no time did the trial court find that his status as a 

pauper had changed. This is of import since that court ordered appellant, via its 

 

1

Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738, 744-45, 87 S.Ct. 1396, 18 L.Ed.2d 493 (1967). 
3

judgment, to pay $2,050 in attorney’s fees. Without a finding of changed financial 

circumstances, an indigent cannot be ordered to pay fees incurred by his appointed 

counsel. Mayer v. State, 309 S.W.3d 552, 557 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010). Nor can the trial 

court order that payment of those fees be taken from the appellant's inmate trust 

account, as was done here. Cates v. State, 402 S.W.3d 250, 251-52 (Tex. Crim. App. 

2013) (applying Mayer to orders of withdrawal from inmate trust accounts). 

Consequently, we modify the judgment and order to withdraw funds from the trust 

account to reflect the holdings of Mayer and Cates. The amount of fees payable is 

reduced by $1150 to $900, and the order is altered to require the collection of no more 

than $900 from the inmate trust fund.2

As modified, the trial court’s judgment is affirmed, and the motion to withdraw is 

granted. 

Brian Quinn 

Chief Justice 

Pirtle, J., concurring and dissenting. 

Do not publish. 

 

2

The $2050 amount is reduced by only $1150 because $900 of the fees was assessed when the 

adjudication of appellant's guilt was originally deferred and he was placed on community supervision. 

Because the error was not appealed at that time, we may not consider it now. Wiley v. State, No. PD1728-12, 2013 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1464, at *21-22 (Tex. Crim. App. September 25, 2013); Riles v. 

State, No. 07-12-00386-CR, 2013 Tex. App. LEXIS 12446, at *7-9 (Tex. App.—Amarillo October 7, 2013, 

no pet. h.).