Court Opinion

ID: 9750574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 15:07:49.968596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:12.820794
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring.
I write separately because, although I agreé with the result, I cannot completely agree with the rationale of the majority for the reasons stated in my concurring and dissenting opinion to the majority opinion in Kim v. State.2 Although appellate courts may suggest filing a motion for new trial in order to provide a complete record when complaints such as ineffective assistance of counsel are raised, criminal law, unlike civil law, does not require the filing of a motion for new trial in order to preserve a complaint for appellate review.3 I *758therefore disagree with the majority’s statement that an appellant in a criminal case is required to file a motion for new trial in order to preserve a complaint for appellate review.4 I also disagree that an appellant in a criminal case has any ability to lodge an objection after a trial is concluded.
In the case now before this court, however, the trial court followed proper procedure. As required by law,5 the trial court announced the sentence to be imposed and asked Appellant Jonathan Laboriel-Guity a/k/a Jonathan Laborielguity if there was any lawful reason why that sentence should not be imposed, and Appellant stated that there was not. Appellant accepted the sentence. This portion of a criminal trial is often referred to as the allocution portion of the trial. Allocution is the common law right of a defendant in a criminal trial, including a trial for criminal contempt, to “present his personal plea to the Court in mitigation of punishment before sentence is imposed.”6 Although article 42.07 of the code of criminal procedure prohibits imposition of sentence only on the grounds of prior pardon, incompetence to stand trial, or mistaken identity, it still grants a defendant the opportunity to speak and to lodge any objection to the sentence before it is pronounced.7 In interpreting article 42.07 as permitting a defendant’s common law right of allocution, we should look to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’s instruction regarding the effect of a statute on common law rights:
It is well-established that, ordinarily, a statute must be interpreted according to its plain meaning, no more and no less. And, it is equally well-established that a statute must not be interpreted as abrogating a principle of the common law unless such overruling is clearly indicated, either by the express terms of the statute or by necessary implication from the language used. This second canon is based on the reasonable supposition that if the Legislature intended to overrule a principle of the common law, then it would have made its intent clear.8
In his concurring opinion in Breazeale v. State,9 Judge Clinton discussed various procedural means available to contest an act or finding in the trial court:
The trial court having found that each appellant waived his right to trial by jury, a plethora of procedural means was readily available to contest that finding in the forum of the trial court. A motion for new trial that the court “has committed [a] material error calculated to injure the rights of defendant” is a solid ground under Article 40.03 and, if supported by the showing appellant now alleges to be the case, granting a new trial would have placed the cause in the same position as before any trial had been held. A motion in arrest of judgment suggesting that “judgment has not been legally rendered against him” would lie under Article 41.01 and related *759provisions of Chapter Forty One. More informally, at allocution under 42.07, an accused could make it known that he had not properly waived his right to trial by jury pursuant to Article 1.13. Thereafter, a formal bill of exception to make the record disclose any event or occurrence relevant to the issue of waiver was available under Article 40.09, § 6(a). Even an objection to the record in accordance with Article 40.09, § 7, would have it “speak the truth” about any alleged failure to follow Article 1.13.10
Glaringly absent is any absolute requirement that a defendant object to an empty bench or file a motion for new trial in order to preserve his complaint.
For these reasons, I cannot join the conscientious majority’s rationale but concur only in the result.

. 283 S.W.3d 473, 476-79 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2009, pet. ref'd) (Dauphinot, J., concurring and dissenting).

. See Tex.R.App. P. 21.2 ("A motion for new trial is a prerequisite to presenting a point of error on appeal only when necessary to adduce facts not in the record.”).

. See majority op. at 756-57.

. See Tex.Code of Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 42.07 (Vernon 2006).

. McClintick v. State, 508 S.W.2d 616, 618 (Tex.Crim.App.1974) (op. on reh'g) (noting that Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 81 S.Ct. 653, 5 L.Ed.2d 670 (1961), provides some of the history of common law allocution).

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 42.07.

. Enos v. State, 889 S.W.2d 303, 305 (Tex.Crim.App.1994) (citations omitted).

. 683 S.W.2d 446, 451 (Tex.Crim.App.1984) (Clinton, J., concurring).

. Id. at 452-53 (citations omitted).