Opinion ID: 480579
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: whether review of the sufficiency of the indictments is foreclosed

Text: 6 Garrett claims that the bribery indictments were fundamentally defective and, as such, deprived the convicting court of jurisdiction. In determining whether a state indictment is sufficient to confer jurisdiction on a convicting court, federal habeas courts typically look to the law of the state where the indictment was issued. Liner v. Phelps, 731 F.2d 1201, 1203 (5th Cir.1984). When it appears ... that the sufficiency of the indictment was squarely presented to the highest court of the state on appeal, and that court held that the trial court had jurisdiction over the case, the issue is foreclosed to the federal habeas court. Murphy v. Beto, 416 F.2d 98, 100 (5th Cir.1969) (cited with approval in Alexander v. McCotter, 775 F.2d 595, 598 (5th Cir.1985)). 7 Garrett did not include the sufficiency of indictment issue in his direct appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals. As a result, the first opportunity given the Court of Criminal Appeals to review this issue came when Garrett applied for post-conviction habeas relief. The Court of Criminal Appeals, without addressing the merits of Garrett's habeas application, issued the following order: 8 It now appearing that this Court's decision on January 19, 1984 to file and set this application for writ of habeas corpus was improvident, the applicant's application for writ of habeas corpus is hereby denied and the cause dismissed. 9 From this order, it is not clear why the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Garrett's application, and it is certainly not clear whether the Court of Criminal Appeals considered the merits of the application. However, this Court held in the case of Alexander v. McCotter 4 , that it does not matter whether the Court of Criminal Appeals expressly addresses the validity of indictments, as long as the indictment claim is fairly presented to the court and its rejection is manifestly clear. 10 In Alexander v. McCotter, the petitioner, like Garrett, raised a sufficiency of indictment argument which was rejected without comment by the Court of Criminal Appeals. A panel of this Court found that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had in fact considered the sufficiency of the petitioner's indictment, even though it had not expressly ruled on the alleged deficiencies. Unlike Alexander, we find that the Court of Criminal Appeals did not consider the sufficiency of Garrett's indictments; rejection of Garrett's application as improvidently set, without more, was not a ruling on the merits. 5 Hence, we must examine the indictments to determine whether they were sufficient to vest jurisdiction in the trial court.