Court Opinion

ID: 9772089
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:07:04.941605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:42.022900
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Judge,
dissenting.
There are three judges on this panel. No two of them agree that any ground of error which has been raised requires reversal. The judgment should not be reversed.
In the first ground of error the appellant challenges the propriety of a judge taking judicial notice in a revocation proceeding, of the evidence that he heard in the probationer’s earlier trial. This form of judicial notice was recognized in Barrientez v. State, 500 S.W.2d 474 (Tex.Cr.App.1973). It was approved, with the provision that the record should reflect clearly the facts from the earlier trial that were judicially noticed, in Bradley v. State, 564 S.W.2d 727 (Tex.Cr.App.1978). The appellant simply repeats the arguments that were advanced and rejected in those cases and in Green v. State, 528 S.W.2d 617 (Tex.Cr.App.1975); O’Hern v. State, 527 S.W.2d 568 (Tex.Cr.App.1975); and Stephenson v. State, 500 S.W.2d 855 (Tex.Cr.App.1973). See also Cleland v. State, 572 S.W.2d 673 (Tex.Cr.App.1978); Haile v. State, 556 S.W.2d 818 (Tex.Cr.App. 1977); Bailey v. State, 543 S.W.2d 653 (Tex. Cr.App.1976). Judge Onion has vigorously dissented, but his dissents have never commanded a majority and they do not do so today.
In his second ground of error, the appellant claims that the evidence was insufficient. He points out that, in the trial of the same offense, the jury hung. He claims that the reason the jury hung was that the credibility of the State’s primary witness was impeached. (The witness was also on probation, and he was shown to have uttered some falsehoods out of court, such as giving a false address to the police.)
The appellant’s claim fails to consider the importance of a different finder of fact and a different burden of proof. The jury could have hung if one member found that the State’s evidence had not removed all reasonable doubts. For the purposes of the probation revocation, it was for the trial judge independently to weigh the credibility of the witnesses, and he had to be persuaded only by a preponderance of the evidence. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the appellee, as we must, I find it sufficient to support the judge’s exercise of discretion.
This claim does not persuade more than one judge, and it is not supported by law.
The only remaining claim is that it was an abuse of discretion to revoke probation when the appellant showed that he had complied with all the other conditions of probation except the one that required him to commit no offense against the law. To put it mildly, the commission of a felony of the first degree is sufficient reason for revoking probation, no matter how well a probationer may be behaving otherwise.
Obviously the panel cannot agree on any principle of law which requires reversal. Yet the judgment is being reversed by the accumulation of two disparate votes. I dissent.
Before the court en banc.