Court Opinion

ID: 9647880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:53:51.863376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:54.076294
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
Were we empowered and authorized in the first instance to determine and weigh considerations of public policy and then to make the consequential decision with respect to punishment for repeat and habitual felony offenders, I might urge the Court to adhere to rationale that established the rule merely followed in Montgomery v. State, *377571 S.W.2d 18 (Tex.Cr.App.1978). Indeed, one might reasonably conclude that the public policy of the State of Texas presently rejects the notion underlying the federal offense sought to be used to enhance punishment in Montgomery v. State, supra — a mild form of firearm control — and insists that no penalty attach to any kind of regulatory scheme pertaining to simple acquisition of a firearm. Similar tensions between federal and state interests may well be perceived in other situations, but I need not engage in that academic exercise to make the point.
Provisions of V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Title 3, Subchapter D, §§ 12.41, 12.42 and 12.43, are creations of the Legislative Department in which the people have vested their lawmaking power, Article III, § 1, Constitution of the State of Texas, and the Judicial Department has not yet been constitutionally permitted to exercise “any power properly attached” to either the Legislative or Executive Departments, see Article II, § 1, id. Any further discourse on that proposition is superfluous.
By its cited enactments, supra, the Legislature, presumably upon due deliberation, has consciously removed the judicial gloss previously applied to antecedent provisions of the former penal codes, observations of which are accurately described in the opinion for the Court. Thus, though through application of the classification of offenses outside the penal code, § 12.41, supra, the public policy of the State of Texas may be so egregiously offended that constitutional protections are implicated, the case at bar does not present such an instance.1
With these observations I join the opinion for the Court.
ONION, P. J., joins.

. To conjure up an extreme example, suppose a citizen of this State has a prior criminal record of conviction for conducting a bingo game on behalf of a veterans organization in a sister state which has clearly denounced and classified that offense as a felony within the meaning of § 12.41, supra, and related definitions. Yet, in the late November 1980 election the people of this State plainly approved of empowering the Legislature to “authorize and regulate” just such bingo games, thereby endorsing the very conduct denounced and penalized by the sister state. Certainly, if the issue were properly raised and presented, this Court would be impelled to examine the situation in light of conflicting public policies, and, in my judgment, should do so. But not today.