Court Opinion

ID: 9683914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:40:09.142616+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:51.267837
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
WOODLEY, Judge.
*500Appellant voluntarily entered a plea of guilty before the court without a jury, as he had done on previous occasions.
Contrary to his expectations, his punishment was assessed at a fine of $500 and imprisonment in jail for one year.
Being charged with a misdemeanor, he had the right to a trial by jury. Const., Art. 1, Sec. 15; and Art. 10, C. C. P.
He also had the right to waive a jury and to have a trial before the court. See Art. 11, C. C. P.; Otto v. State, 87 S. W. 698.
Either such right existed whether the plea be guilty or not guilty.
He knew what he was doing when he entered his plea before the judge. He told the county attorney that he wanted his plea taken that day; that “he wanted to go before the judge and have his plea taken.”
Having consented to the trial of his case on his plea of guilty before the court, appellant thereby waived his right to a jury trial. See Moore v. State, 22 Tex. App. 117, 2 S. W. 634.
Appellant made no objection to a trial without a jury until he learned that the judge had assessed a punishment greater than that he, from his previous experiences before the same court and judge, had expected. It was too late then to complain that he should have been tried before a jury. See Mackey v. State, 68 Tex. Cr. R. 539, 151 S. W. 802; and Bumguardner v. State, 147 Tex. Cr. R. 188, 179 S. W. 2d 768.
In his bills of exception, appellant sought to have the trial judge certify that he took into consideration the information given him by the county attorney and his assistant concerning two prior convictions against appellant.
In his qualifications to such bills of exception, the trial judge certified that the two previous convictions “were convicions in this same court, and I as judge of this court simply took judicial knowledge of my own records.”
Such facts do not bring appellant’s case under the law as applied by this court in Alley v. State, 154 Tex. Cr. R. 145, 225 S. W. 2d 970, but are quite similar to the situation in Letterman v. State, 146 Tex. Cr. R. 37, 171 S. W. 2d 349, wherein *501the judgment on a plea of guilty before the court was affirmed, and from which we quote the following: “In fixing the penalty the court took judicial knowledge of its own records in which this party had appeared for violation of the law, as well as the fact that he had pleaded guilty in three distinct cases, all charging similar offenses.”
The appeal having been properly disposed of in the original submission, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.
Opinion approved by the court.