Court Opinion

ID: 9654402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:19:12.187916+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:08.986985
License: Public Domain

ONION, Presiding Judge
(dissenting).
Following the reversal of this cause for the trial court’s failure to make findings as to the admissibility and voluntariness of the confession and over eighteen months after the hearing on the motion to suppress, the trial court for the first time made such findings. The same are found in a supplemental transcript forwarded to the court.
Putting aside any question of whether such belated findings satisfy federal constitutional requirements, it is observed that the belated findings do not satisfy the mandatory requirements of Article 38.22, Vernon’s Ann.C.C.P.
If trial judges may choose to comply with the mandatory requirements of the statute only after reversal on original submission, then why should trial judges ever make findings of fact or conclusions of law with regard to the voluntariness of a confession until the time of a reversal?
Clearly the practice upon which the majority places its stamp of approval not only violates the mandatory provisions of the statute and legislative will but has undesirable results. It is disruptive of sound judicial administration to the extent that finality of the judgment of this court in the first instance is never assured. If, after an initial opinion, the trial judge does what the law required he should have done in the first place, then this court must reconsider the matter and write still another opinion. The practice is destructive of judicial economy at the appellate level at a time when that economy is most important.
Believing the cause was properly disposed of on original submission, I dissent.
ROBERTS, J., joins in this dissent.