Court Opinion

ID: 9668177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:04:55.333597+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:43.382945
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in this cause. I write separately only to address misconceptions at work in the dissenting opinion by Presiding Judge McCormick. As I understand it, he objects that the Court adopts a reading of Article I, § 14 of the Texas Constitution that is different from the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Inter alia, he believes we ought never to construe state constitutional provisions more protectively than the United States Supreme Court construes its federal analogs. I disagree. In developing his argument, he opines that we are not at liberty to construe our state constitutional provisions less protectively. In this he is simply mistaken.
While we need not construe the Texas Constitution differently, there is simply no getting around the fact that we construe it independently. “Even if we find the federal example persuasive, and adopt it as our own, it is still this Court that construes” the provisions of our constitution. Johnson v. State, 912 S.W.2d 227, 238 (Tex.Cr.App.1995) (Clinton, J., dissenting). And while we should not construe the provisions of our constitution differently than settled interpretations of the federal constitution simply because we can, “no one on the Court should doubt by now that we can.” Id. I am persuaded by the opinion of the Court today that in this instance, we should.
One reason Judge McCormick believes we should never construe the State constitution more protectively than the federal is that we are not at liberty to construe it less protectively, and sauce for the proverbial goose is sauce for the proverbial gander. Op. at 706-707. His premise, however, is mistaken. We are, in fact, “free to disagree with the Supreme Court when it comes to finding ‘less protection’ in [our] state constitution[ ].” Id., at 707. We have held, for instance, that, unlike the Fourth Amendment, Article I, § 9 brooks no exclusionary rule. Richardson v. State, 865 S.W.2d 944, 948, n. 3 (Tex.Cr.App.1993). A claim of illegal search or seizure brought only under Article I, § 9 would avail the criminal defendant nothing at all were it not for Article 38.23 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, our statutory exclusionary rule. For this reason a defendant is likely to invoke the Fourth Amendment under the incorporation doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment. But that would not negate the fact that Article I, § 9 of the Texas Constitution is less protective — and nobody, including the United States Supreme Court, can tell this Court otherwise.* Indeed, but for our *701authority to construe provisions of the state constitution less protectively than their federal counterparts, Judge Mccormick would not be able to suggest, as he does twice in his dissent, that the language of Article I, § 14 does not even contemplate “application to the mistrial setting.” Op. at 706, n. 5, and at 707. While obviously I disagree with his suggestion, I acknowledge that the Court would have the authority to construe our jeopardy provision that way, less protective though it may be.
But just as we can construe our constitution less protectively, we can read it more protectively too, if we are persuaded that the language of our provision calls for more, and/or that settled interpretation of the federal constitution is ill-conceived. We did not need Heitman v. State, 815 S.W.2d 681 (Tex.Cr.App.1991) to affirm that we must interpret the Texas Constitution independently. That much is self-evident. I cannot imagine any valid reason to relinquish the prerogative that comes with independent interpretation, viz: to construe our constitution differently from time to time, as Presiding Judge Onion once said, according to “our own lights.” Olson v. State, 484 S.W.2d 756, 762 (Tex.Cr.App.1972) (Opinion on rehearing). With these supplemental remarks, I join the Court’s opinion.

 Professors Neil McCabe and Catherine Greene Burnett have observed:
"Not always does a state constitution provide greater protection for the suspect or ac*701cused than does the federal Bill of Rights. Contrary to what many think, state consititu-tional analysis can provide a lesser degree of protection, and more than one court has so held."
McCabe & Burnett, State Constitutional Criminal Procedure: Cases and Materials (3rd ed. 1991) at 7.