Court Opinion

ID: 9759407
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:15:14.359927+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:04:07.080939
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
The function of accepted rules of statutory construction is to ascertain legislative intent.1 My own analysis of pertinent provisions of the family code against a backdrop of predecessors to its Section 54.02(h) has led me to a conclusion that Ex parte Menefee, 561 S.W.2d 822 (Tex.Cr.App.1977) was correctly decided. For me it is clear enough that the Menefee holding comports with discernible legislative concern that a child transferred over to the criminal justice system be afforded protections beyond those provided for real adults.
The perceived situation concerning handling children alleged to have committed penal offenses as it had developed to 1965 evoked a corrective, remedial legislative response that materialized as Acts 1965, 59th Leg., p. 1256, Ch. 577, Sec. 3.2 Basic to that response was the expressed notion that circumstances surrounding a child certified and transferred by a juvenile court as an adult to a district court or criminal district court should again be examined by the latter court having jurisdiction over criminal offenses. Thus, the 1965 amendment conferred upon a transferee district judge powers and duties of examining magistrates and directed that “upon hearing the District Judge shall make an order committing the child to jail, discharging him, admitting him to bail, or remanding him to the custody of the Juvenile Court as the law and facts of the case may require.”3
In 1967 the 1965 amendment was stripped of redundancies and crystallized to provide that the transferred child “shall be dealt with as an adult and in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure,” to prescribe that transfer of custody “is an arrest” and to insist that “the examining trial shall be conducted by the district court or criminal district court which may remand the child to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court.” But, according to at least one close observer, essence of initial legislative response remained so that in carrying out the statutory scheme the transferee court “must hold an examining trial to make its determination” and it “may instead of referring the child back to the juvenile court send the case on to the grand jury,” Billings, footnote 2, supra.
Adopted in 1973, the family code brought forward as Section 54.02(h) substantially the 1967 provisions regarding responsibilities imposed on a transferee court:
“On transfer of the child for criminal proceedings, he shall be dealt with as an adult and in accordance with the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, 1965. The transfer of custody is an arrest. The examining trial shall be conducted by the court to which the case was transferred, which may remand the child to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court.”
This history of developments and resultant language of Section 54.02(h) teaches that legislative intent was to vest in the transferee court jurisdiction over a child *850cum certified adult to make a threshold “probable cause” determination to hold the “adult” for further criminal proceedings or to relinquish criminal jurisdiction by remanding the child to juvenile court. Since power and authority to conduct an examining trial — a criminal proceeding — attach only upon transfer of a child certified as an adult to the transferee court, it follows that a remand to juvenile court upon finding no probable cause terminates criminal jurisdiction of the transferee court and returns the certified adult to status as a child.
Of course, by reason of Sec. 8.07(b), Y.A. P.C., when the child is no longer a certified adult neither a grand jury nor any other law enforcement agency restricted to dealing with alleged adult offenders may legally confront the remanded child.
Accordingly, I agree with the conclusions of Menefee, supra, that upon transfer an examining trial is mandated and it is the “second vital step in determining whether a juvenile should be tried as an adult” so that, without it, an indictment returned pri- or to an examining trial is void.4 Therefore, I concur in the judgment of the Court.

. Minton v. Frank, 545 S.W.2d 442, 445 (Tex.1976).

. See generally, Billings, “The New Juvenile Delinquent Law,” 31 T.B.J. 203 (March 1968); Steele, “The Treatment of Juveniles Under the Family Code; an Overview,” Texas Tech.L.R. 589 (1974).

.That these statutory provisions may reflect concepts which perplex and confound the criminal law expert is not sufficient justification for rejecting them in critical terms.

. Comfort in the conclusion reached is provided by historically recorded facts that examining trials were indeed routinely conducted by the trial bench from and after the 1965 amendment: Jackson v. State, 449 S.W.2d 242, 243 (Tex.Cr.App.1969); Garza v. State, 469 S.W.2d 169, 171 (Tex.Cr.App.1971); Ellis v. State, 543 S.W.2d 135, 137 (Tex.Cr.App.1976); Q-V_ v. State, 564 S.W.2d 781, 785 (Tex.Civ.App.—San Antonio, 1978, writ ref., n. r. e.) and, further, that the bar is being so advised as in, e. g., Billings, supra and Dawson, “Juvenile Law and Procedure,” II Advanced Criminal Law Course JJ at 29 (State Bar of Texas, August 1978). Moreover, our appellate courts are making clear that the respective determinations made by a juvenile court in a transfer proceeding and the transferee court at examining trial are independent of and not at war with each other; thus, a determination of the ultimate issue in a transfer proceeding is independently reviewed without regard to subsequent criminal proceedings, L.L.S., Relator v. Wade, 565 S.W.2d 251 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1978) and does not suspend criminal proceedings pending appeal, Moreno v. State, 511 S.W.2d 273 (Tex.Cr.App.1974) and the transferee court conducting an examining trial after transfer “need only make a finding of probable cause,” Q_ V_ v. State, supra.