Court Opinion

ID: 9662036
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:57:44.449783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:35.449578
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority denies appellant’s motion for rehearing en banc. I would grant the motion and reverse the judgment.
In this motion appellant renews his attack on Art. 1200cc, V.A.C.S., which he claims operated to deprive him of the equal *487protection of the laws. Under the statute Harris County municipal courts are courts of record. However, Section 8 of Article 1200cc provides that misdemeanants convicted in municipal court who appeal their convictions to county criminal court may not as part of that appeal obtain a trial de novo. Instead, their appeal is limited to alleged errors contained in the record made in municipal court. Appellant was just such a defendant.
However, had the complaint against appellant been filed in a Harris County justice court instead of in municipal court, he would have been entitled to a trial de novo in county court after his lower court conviction. Art. 44.17, V.A.C.C.P. Appellant urges that because of this distinction, and because Harris County municipal courts have jurisdiction concurrent with justice courts,1 he has been deprived of equal protection of the laws.
In Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U.S. 22, 31, 25 L.Ed. 989 (1880), the court stated the applicable rule to be as follows:
“[Tjhere is nothing in the Constitution to prevent any State from adopting any system of laws or judicature it sees fit for all or any part of its territory. If the State of New York, for example, should see fit to adopt the civil law and its method of procedure for New York City and the surrounding counties, and the common law and its method of procedure for the rest of the State, there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent its doing so. This would not, of itself, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, be a denial to any person of the equal protection of the laws. If every person residing or being in either portion of the State should be accorded the equal protection of the laws prevailing there, he could not justly complain of a violation of the clause referred to. For, as before said, it has respect to persons and classes of persons. It means that no person or class of persons shall be denied the same protection of the laws which is enjoyed by other persons or other classes in the same place and under like circumstances." (Emphasis added.)
The rule in Lewis was cited with approval in Salsburg v. Maryland, 346 U.S. 545, 551, 74 S.Ct. 280, 98 L.Ed. 281 (1954), and, more recently, in the Chief Justice’s opinion for the majority in North v. Russell, 427 U.S. 328, 338-339, 96 S.Ct. 2709, 49 L.Ed.2d 534 (1976).
As Chief Justice Burger pointed out in North, the rule is subject to the proviso that “all people within the classified area are treated equally.” 427 U.S., supra, at 339, 96 S.Ct. at 2714. But in Harris County, all equally-situated people are not treated equally. Those convicted in justice court have a right to trial de novo, while others, charged with the same offense in the same area but prosecuted in municipal court, are legislatively deprived of this valuable right. Such an arbitrary distinction exceeds even the admittedly broad power of the Legislature to act in this area. Missouri v. Lewis, supra; North v. Russell, supra. Cf. Baxstrom v. Herold, 383 U.S. 107, 86 S.Ct. 760, 15 L.Ed.2d 620 (1966).
I would hold that appellant’s right to the equal protection of the laws has been violated. The judgment denying relief should be reversed and the cause remanded for a trial de novo in county court.

. See Section 2 of Article 1200cc.