Opinion ID: 2829338
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Granting Relief Poses Few Practical Benefits and Many Potential Practical Burdens.

Text: Even if we can issue mandamus here, it is doubly clear that we should not . Even if it is legal, it is certainly impractical. Most peculiar about the Court’s decision to accept this appeal is the lack of any compelling practical reason to do so. The Court of Criminal Appeals itself acknowledged two years ago—before the case even arrived on our doorstep—that it has jurisdiction to hear the case. 15 7 If we dismiss, Reece will return to our sister court, where a motion for reconsideration remains pending—presumably awaiting our action. This renders untrue the Court’s statement that Reece has “no other procedure to challenge his confinement in our state courts” 15 8 and “no adequate remedy by appeal.” 15 9 The Court of Criminal Appeals has not refused to act; it has instead deferred final action until we act first. 16 0 I agree that “mandamus is a proper vehicle for this Court to correct blatant injustice that otherwise would elude review by the appellate courts,” 16 1 but that scenario simply does not exist here. As discussed above, the Court has utilized mandamus as a flexible remedy only where all other meaningful roads were blocked. If adequate appellate relief is available elsewhere, mandamus should not be used as judicial duct tape to cover “gaps” that simply do not exist. Where our sister court has conceded its own authority to act, we should be doubly disinclined to intervene.
If the instant case offers no reason to seize jurisdiction, the specter of future cases more strongly militates against our doing so. Hearing the case implies that the Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals are not co-equals. Accepting mandamus jurisdiction when the Court of Criminal Appeals has exclusive habeas jurisdiction over these types of contempt orders would violate the mandated separation with that court. It would evince more respect for an institution we call our equal, and those who created it, to allow it to hear its rightful docket than to encroach pointlessly upon it.
Similarly, this case leaves open the question of whether and when a petitioner may seek review in both courts, and in what order. Such confusion could lead to an unnecessarily increased docket in either court, or at least wasted resources spent shuffling cases between the two systems (or discussing whether to do the shuffle in the first place). While the Court seems concerned that dismissing Reece’s case would constitute “a potential waste of judicial and litigant resources as the case travels between [both courts], with neither court exercising jurisdiction to consider the merits of Reece’s petition,” 16 2 that small, one-time shuffle will save us far more than it will cost. Ignoring the reality that our jurisdiction is limited will only make the ping pong match longer, and with more balls in the air. The confusion caused in hearing this case will affect both litigants and the courts of appeals below that have understood and applied for years the rule that today the Court contravenes. The court of appeals in the instant case certainly believed it was following that rule when it dismissed Reece’s habeas petition for want of jurisdiction. It would be strange to tell those courts that a relator need only style his petition as mandamus to merit jurisdiction, especially when—as the Court acknowledges 16 3 —those courts have been operating under the assumption that mandamus was the only proper remedy. 16 4 Even Reece himself assumed this was the rule, as indicated by his decision to file “a motion for reconsideration in the Court of Criminal Appeals, explaining that this Court lacks habeas jurisdiction because the contempt order does not emanate from a violation of an order, judgment, or decree.” 16 5 Further, this issue is before us largely because of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ mistaken view that this Court has habeas jurisdiction. 16 6 Making it a policy to grant cases that arise out of error instead of correcting the error will make neither our court nor our sister court as careful or as diligent in reviewing cases as we ought to be; it will only encourage punting cases—likely, the most difficult cases deserving of the most attention—back and forth between us. Reece claims that these are “unique circumstances” warranting mandamus as a matter of policy; but, contradictorily, Reece also warns that “the next case might involve a party to a civil case sentenced to six months in jail for contempt.” It certainly might. But that would be a matter for the Court of Criminal Appeals.
A lack of jurisdictional clarity threatens to encourage forum shopping. An astute attorney may determine that his client stands to receive a more favorable ruling at one court rather than the other, and arrange jurisdiction-manipulative arguments accordingly. After this case, for example, petitioners seeking an audience with the Supreme Court would be advised to style their petitions as mandamus; with the Court of Criminal Appeals, habeas.
Finally, the Court’s suggestion that today’s decision draws helpful lines of clarity between the civil and the criminal is unpersuasive. Today the Court may ostensibly limit itself by allowing this Court to grant mandamus in “situations where the underlying dispute is civil in nature, and the Court of Criminal Appeals declines to exercise its habeas jurisdiction.” 16 7 This has the semblance of a bright-line rule—we hear appeals arising from underlying civil matters, and the Court of Criminal Appeals from underlying criminal matters. But that is misleadingly simplistic, and contravenes prior precedent in which we explained that case categorization does not dispose of this issue. In other words, it is still true that “[u] nder the provisions of the Texas Constitution and the pertinent Texas statutes relating to the original jurisdiction of this Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals, the circumstance that the cause out of which a restraint of a person’s liberty arises may be classified as a civil case, is not sufficient to vest this Court with habeas corpus jurisdiction.” 16 8 Further, hearing this case, and perhaps future cases like it, may force us to handle appeals from civil cases with criminal penalties, and force us at least in part to take on quasi-criminal matters. An unnecessary, duplicative upsurge in this Court’s docket is alarming enough on its own; but one comprised of quasi-criminal cases when there is a separate court designated for criminal matters is even more insupportable. It is easy to draw a line based upon the nature of the underlying case, but this case alone demonstrates that the line is somewhat meaningless. Even the Court acknowledges that “the distinction between criminal and civil contempt does not turn on whether the underlying litigation is civil or criminal, but rather on the nature of the court’s punishment.” 16 9 The instant case, then, demonstrates that the cases—like the courts that hear them—are not always cleanly bifurcated. Here, the Court finds constructive criminal contempt even though it was imposed in a civil trial and not for the violation of a court order. 17 0 The world is not nearly as tidy as the approach the Court has designed for it. In those blurry instances, it seems best to follow precedent. And a bright-line rule is particularly without its usual benefits where it comes at the expense of precedent that prohibits such a rule. “[W]e are seldom presented with the opportunity to give a jurisdictional statute a reasonable construction that results in more uniformity and simplicity (even if only slightly more), and given that opportunity in this case, I would seize it.” 17 1 The simplest—and most defensible—approach is not to attempt to create a bright-line rule but to refrain from hearing the case whatsoever. The brightest line is the one drawn between these two courts. After all, the Court of Criminal Appeals has called its original jurisdiction to issue writs of habeas corpus “unlimited.” 17 2