Court Opinion

ID: 9763709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:52:55.786714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:48.779764
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON STATE’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
ODOM, Judge.
On original submission appellant’s conviction for aggravated robbery was reversed because he had previously been convicted in the same cause for robbery and subsequently was granted a new trial by the trial court. We held the first conviction for robbery operated as an acquittal of the greater offense of aggravated robbery, and thus was a bar to the conviction on retrial for that greater offense.
*741We granted the State’s motion for leave to file motion for rehearing in this ease because of its contention that our decision on original submission “could mean the demise of plea bargaining in the State of Texas as we know it today.” On reexamination of this case we find the record does not show a plea bargain was involved here. The State concedes as much in its brief when it argues, “This Court judicially knows that the vast majority of criminal cases are disposed of by ‘plea bargains.’ And we believe it safe to assume that that is exactly what happened in the first trial of the instant case.” We can make no such assumption; we are bound by the record.
Also, the State’s fears of an adverse impact on the plea bargaining process by the doctrine of jeopardy fails to take consideration of the fact that the new trial permitted by the trial court here was purely discretionary. Appellant was allowed to withdraw his guilty plea after he had been convicted of robbery. Appellant in this case did not exercise some form of procedural trickery to escape his part of any hypothetical plea bargain while keeping the State bound. To describe what occurred here, as is done in the State’s brief, as a situation where “the State is bound by its ‘promise’ when the defendant breaks his,” is to misrepresent what happened. If there was a plea bargain, appellant did not break his part but was released from it by a discretionary ruling by the trial court. Any opposition to such a release should be addressed to the trial court at the time withdrawal of the guilty plea is sought. This Court’s opinion on original submission did not create an escape clause for plea bargaining defendants that will leave the plea bargaining prosecutors bound to their half of the bargain. It simply enforced the jeopardy protection that arose out of the first conviction.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.