Court Opinion

ID: 9777212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:02:24.486069+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:50.170596
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
MORRISON, Presiding Judge.
In our original opinion we did not discuss Appellant’s Bill *40of Exception No. 3. It is directed to the court’s refusal to dismiss the indictment against him. The grounds urged for such dismissal are as follows:
Two indictments were returned against this appellant by the Dallas County grand jury in August, 1950, one of which charged him with a robbery alleged to have been committed on March 30, 1950, and the other with a robbery alleged to have been committed on April 2, 1950. Appellant was tried in January, 1951, for one robbery and sentenced to not less than five years and no more than life imprisonment and was thereafter transmitted to the penitentiary to serve such sentence. After having served the minimum time on the above sentence, appellant applied to this court for a writ of habeas corpus. This court, with the writer dissenting, ordered appellant released. See Ex parte Goss, 159 Texas Cr. Rep. 235, 262 S.W. 2d 412.
In compliance with said order, appellant was released from the penitentiary in November, 1953, but was transferred to the Dallas County jail to answer the instant indictment. He was tried on such indictment in March of 1954.
It is the appellant’s contention that he has, by the failure of the state to force him to trial in the instant case prior to March, 1954, been deprived of his constiutional right to a speedy trial. Let us examine such contention in the light of this record and the records of this court. Appellant did not appeal his first conviction but accepted his sentence and waited until he had served the minimum time thereunder and then applied immediately to this court for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging that the sentence was void as to the punishment in excess of the minimum. This court agreed with appellant and ordered his discharge from such sentence.
Had the appellant wanted a trial in the instant case, no doubt he would have proceeded with the same alacrity and petitioned the Texas Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus as did the relator in State ex rel. Moreau v. Bond, District Judge, 271 S.W. 379. Having failed, without excuse, to avail himself of the legal remedies at his command, he may not now rely upon the state’s failure to act.
Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this appeal originally, the appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.