Court Opinion

ID: 9768535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 06:07:46.731068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:41.773466
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, Judge,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion because I subscribe fully to its “critical stage” analysis and because I am willing to concede that the criticalness for Sixth Amendment purposes of a so-called “preliminary initial appearance” (PIA) is here contested by the State’s petition for discretionary review. But it is not my impression, nor do the papers in this case fairly support a conclusion, that review was actually granted to decide whether the PIA was a “critical stage” of the proceedings against Appellant.
The Court of Appeals, relying only on Neh-man v. State, 721 S.W.2d 319, 322 (Tex.Crim.App.1986), held simply that “Appellant was entitled to assistance of counsel at the PIA.” Green v. State, No. 01-90-00662-CR, 1991 WL 189699 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st] Sept. 26, 1991) (unpublished), Slip Op. at 5. Nehman, in turn, stands only for the proposition that “[t]here is no question that adversarial proceedings ha[ve] been initiated” for Sixth Amendment purposes by the time of an “Art. 15.17 warning hearing.” 721 S.W.2d at 322 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the opinion which we here review does not expressly or implicitly include a decision on the question of criticalness.
Moreover, the State mainly argues in its petition that the Court of Appeals position, and therefore also the holding in Nehman, is untenable because adversary judicial proceedings are not really initiated in felony cases until the Grand Jury returns an indictment. State’s PDR at 5-7 (emphasis omitted). Although the State does “note[] that ... [a] probable cause determination is not a critical stage” under Supreme Court precedent, this is not really the crux of its argument. State’s PDR at 5 (internal quotation marks omitted). It therefore seems clear to me that the question actually presented for review in this case is whether, under Texas law, the Houston PIA occurred after the inception of a formal criminal prosecution against Appellant. We need not decide whether the PIA was a so-called “critical stage” of the prosecution unless we first conclude that a prosecution had in fact begun. McCambridge v. State, 712 S.W.2d 499, 502 n. 11 (Tex.Crim.App.1986); Forte v. State, 707 S.W.2d 89, 92 (Tex.Crim.App.1986). I write separately to elaborate my own views on this question.
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution broadly assures that, “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” This right is applicable in state criminal prosecutions through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Gideon v. Wainwright, *729372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), but is effective “only at or after the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings against the defendant.” United States v. Gouveia, 467 U.S. 180, 187, 104 S.Ct. 2292, 2296, 81 L.Ed.2d 146 (1984). Whether adversary judicial proceedings have been instituted is, of course, a matter of state law. Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 98 S.Ct. 458, 54 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977).
Unfortunately, our precedents do not clearly or unambiguously mark the inception of criminal proceedings in this State. We have usually insisted that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel be effectuated only after the filing of an indictment or of a formal complaint and information. DeBlanc v. State, 799 S.W.2d 701, 706 (Tex.Crim.App.1990); Spence v. State, 795 S.W.2d 743, 752 (Tex.Crim.App.1990); Miffleton v. State, 111 S.W.2d 76, 78 (Tex.Crim.App.1989); McCambridge, 712 S.W.2d at 502; Forte, 707 S.W.2d at 91-92. But we have not consistently held that formal criminal prosecution must necessarily begin in this way. Indeed, we have even held that execution of an arrest warrant may be a sufficiently formal accusation under Texas law to trigger the application of Sixth Amendment protections. Thus, in Nehman, upon which the Court of Appeals expressly relied in this case, the accused was arrested in Iowa on a murder warrant issued from Potter County, Texas, and then returned to Amarillo for prosecution. Investigating officers obtained a written confession from him, which was completed after he had been taken before a magistrate, warned in the manner required by article 15.17 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and furnished with appointed counsel. Without citation of authority or further discussion of the issue, we concluded that, “since charges were filed against appellant ... by the time of [his] Art. 15.17 warning hearing[,]” Id. at 323 n. 2 (internal quotation marks omitted), “adversarial proceedings had been initiated, and ... appellant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel had attached.”1 Id. at 322. Accordingly, it is fair to say that Nehman does stand for the proposition that arrest warrants constitute formal criminal charges for purposes of implementing the Sixth. Amendment right to counsel in Texas. See also Lucas v. State, 791 S.W.2d 35, 45 (Tex.Crim.App.1989); Janecka v. State, 739 S.W.2d 813, 826 (Tex.Crim.App.1987); Barnhill v. State, 651 S.W.2d 131, 132 (Tex.Crim.App.1983) (panel opinion).
But our position in this matter is not well supported by federal Sixth Amendment jurisprudence, nor does it comport with the realities of criminal prosecution under Texas law. Although Nehman ⅛ language is reminiscent of that used by the United States Supreme Court in Brewer v. Williams,2 a case similar on its facts, the significant event in Brewer was not the warrant of arrest but the circumstance of a judicial arraignment on the warrant. To regard Brewer as authority for the proposition that Nehman was facing formal criminal charges would, therefore, require interpreting the procedure contemplated by article 15.17 as tantamount to an arraignment. See Spence, 795 S.W.2d at 752-53 (“statutory warnings are not ‘formal charges’ ”). Clearly this was not our holding in Nehman, which declared that formal criminal charges were already pending “by the *730time of [Nehman’s] Art. 15.17 warning hearing.”
In Texas, as elsewhere, the purpose of an arraignment is to identify the accused and hear his plea to the State’s charging instrument. Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 26.02; Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52, 54 n. 4, 82 S.Ct. 157, 158 n. 4, 7 L.Ed.2d 114 (1961); 21 Am.Jur.2d Criminal Law §§ 433-442; 22 C.J.S. Criminal Law §§ 356-364. It is often the first adversarial confrontation between an accused and government prosecuting attorneys after the filing of formal criminal charges. Texas procedure requires there to be an arraignment “[i]n all felony cases, after indictment, and all misdemeanor cases punishable by imprisonment,” Code Crim.Proc. art. 26.01, and provides that “[n]o arraignment shall take place until the expiration of at least two entire days after the day on which a copy of the indictment was served on the defendant, unless the right to such copy or to such delay be waived, or unless the defendant is on bail.” Code Crim.Proc. art. 26.03. Nothing could be clearer than that an arraignment in all cases of felony cannot occur prior to the return of an indictment, both because the law expressly forbids it and because there is no formal charge upon which to plead under Texas law until an indictment or other satisfactory charging instrument has been returned.
In contrast, the procedure according to which the state of Texas provides for taking persons under arrest before an impartial magistrate at the earliest opportunity is plainly designed, not as a way of joining issue on criminal pleadings, but as a means of protecting essential rights of the suspect during the period following his arrest until the justice system decides whether to initiate a formal prosecution against him.3 Code Crim.Proc. art. 15.17. The fact that a determination of probable cause is often made as a part of this procedure does not turn it into a criminal prosecution, any more than a determination of probable cause made by a justice of the peace issuing an arrest warrant in his living room or a grand jury investigation conducted in secret is a criminal prosecution. See Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 120, 95 S.Ct. 854, 866, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975) (“[A]d-versary safeguards are not essential for the probable cause determination required by the Fourth Amendment”).
Our system contemplates a variety of instances in which public officials are obliged to decide whether there is reason to believe that some person has offended the penal laws of this state.4 Sometimes people are de*731tained or made to give appearance bonds as a result of such decisions. But these people are not subjected to criminal prosecution under the laws of Texas until an indictment, information, or other charging instrument is filed. With the exception of criminal prosecutions in justice and municipal courts, a warrant of arrest based on a complaint showing probable cause to believe that a suspect committed the offense alleged, although sufficient to authorize his detention, is not the kind of instrument upon which a conviction may be obtained.5
Criminal prosecution begins in Texas when the State officially announces that it will seek to convict a suspect of violating the state’s criminal laws. It does not begin when the State merely detains or requires security for the appearance of a suspect pending completion of its investigation and decision whether to prosecute. See Dunn v. State, 696 S.W.2d 561, 565 (Tex.Crim.App.1985) (plurality opinion) (“The mere arrest and subsequent questioning of a person do not constitute a sufficient formalization of proceedings to trigger the requirement of counsel under the Sixth Amendment.”)6 Accordingly, I would hold that formal prosecution is not initiated in Texas for purposes of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel until the State has filed the kind of accusatory pleading upon which a conviction might lawfully be based.7 In felonies, that pleading is an indictment, unless it has been waived. For misdemeanors punishable by imprisonment, it is a complaint and information. In justice and municipal courts, it may be a formal complaint alone. In my judgment, it is meaningless under Texas law to regard as formally adversarial any events which transpire before the filing of such an accusatory pleading. To the extent that they hold otherwise, I would overrule Nehman, Lucas, Janecka, and Barnhill.
I realize that many incidents in the investigative and administrative process prior to the inception of adversarial proceedings affect criminal suspects in important ways and that the assistance of counsel on such occasions might be genuinely helpful to them. But “our cases have never suggested that the purpose of the right to counsel is to provide a defendant with a preindictment private investigator!.]” Gouveia, 467 U.S. at 191, 104 5.Ct. at 2299. See also Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 431, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 1146, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986). Persons merely suspected of crimes simply are not covered by *732the Sixth Amendment. Rather, the right to counsel there assured applies only after the State has formally “committed itself to prosecute.” Kirby, 406 U.S. at 689, 92 S.Ct. at 1882.
This does not mean, of course, that the Sixth Amendment is altogether inapplicable at every nonjudicial or nonadversarial encounter between the accused and agents of the government. Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 57, 53 S.Ct. 55, 60, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932). Clearly, the right to counsel may be effective in circumstances which are neither judicial nor formally adversarial, such as lineups, police interrogations, and psychiatric examinations. See Powell v. Texas, 492 U.S. 680, 109 S.Ct. 3146, 106 L.Ed.2d 551 (1989); Maine v. Moulton, 474 U.S. 159, 106 S.Ct. 477, 88 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985); Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 1866, 68 L.Ed.2d 359 (1981); United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). But the Sixth Amendment right to counsel applies in such instances, and at all other critical stages of the criminal prosecution, whether adversarial or investigative, only when the encounter occurs after adversarial proceedings are formally begun in a court of law.8
With these additional remarks, I join the opinion of the Court.

. Relying mainly on Nehman, we recently opined in Fuller v. State that an accused who had been arrested and charged by warrant with a criminal offense was "probably right to insist that an effective waiver of counsel under the Sixth Amendment was essential to the admissibility of his ensuing statements.” 829 S.W.2d 191, 205 (Tex.Crim.App.1992). But we did not finally resolve the issue in that case. Instead, we found that, even assuming appellant was entitled to counsel under the Sixth Amendment, he had expressly waived that right, and that there was "an adequate basis in the record for a conclusion that his waiver was constitutionally acceptable, not only under the Fifth Amendment, but for Sixth Amendment purposes as well.” Id. Hence, although Fuller does not purport to be authoritative as to the kind of formal criminal charges which, for purposes of the Sixth Amendment, mark the inception of adversary judicial proceedings in Texas, the cases upon which it relied do.

. "There can be no doubt in the present case that judicial proceedings had been initiated against Williams before the start of the automobile ride from Davenport to Des Moines. A warrant had been issued for his arrest, he had been arraigned on that warrant before a judge in the Davenport courtroom, and he had been committed by the court to confinement in jail.” 430 U.S. 387, 399, 97 S.Ct 1232, 1240, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977).

. In other states, this procedure occasionally includes or is called an "arraignment.” When it is, the United States Supreme Court sometimes conclusively considers it to mark the inception of adversary judicial proceedings because Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 689, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 1882, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972) (plurality opinion) once speculated that judicial proceedings are often initiated by means of an "arraignment.” Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. 625, 629 n. 3, 106 S.Ct. 1404, 1406 n. 3, 89 L.Ed.2d 631 (1986); Brewer, 430 U.S. at 399, 97 S.Ct. at 1240. In Texas, however, appearance before a magistrate to receive statutory warnings after arrest is neither denominated nor does it serve the function of an arraignment, and it is not considered to mark the inception of formal adversary proceedings. See Wyatt v. State, 566 S.W.2d 597, 600 (Tex.Crim.App.1978) (panel opinion); Tarpley v. Estelle, 703 F.2d 157, 162 (5th Cir.1983) cert. denied 464 U.S. 1002, 104 S.Ct. 508, 78 L.Ed.2d 697; McGee v. Estelle, 625 F.2d 1206, 1209 (5th Cir.1980) cert. denied 449 U.S. 1089, 101 S.Ct. 883, 66 L.Ed.2d 817 (1981). See also Garcia v. State, 626 S.W.2d 46, 53 (Tex.Crim.App.1981); Thomas v. State, 605 S.W.2d 290, 292 (Tex.Crim.App.1980); Lane v. State, 506 S.W.2d 212, 213 (Tex.Crim.App.1974).

. Among these proceedings is the examining trial, originally considered mandatory in all cases of arrest, with or without warrant. Texas law makes this procedure distinctly adversarial by providing for the direct and cross examination of witnesses, representation of the parties by their attorneys, the appointment of counsel to represent indigent defendants, and application of the same rules of evidence as in criminal trials generally. Code Crim.Proc. arts. 16.01, 16.06, 16.-07. Compare Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. at 114 n. 14, 115 n. 15, 95 S.Ct. at 863 n. 14, 864 n. 15. It was once contemplated that examining trials be held soon after arrest in all cases by the same magistrate before whom the suspect was brought under article 15.17 of the Code in order "to examine into the truth of the accusation made,” Code Crim.Proc. art. 16.01, and to decide whether the suspect should be committed to jail, discharged, or admitted to bail. Code Crim.Proc. art. 16.17. Ex parte Garcia, 547 S.W.2d 271 (Tex.Crim.App.1977); Ex parte Wright, 138 Tex.Crim.R. 350, 136 S.W.2d 212 (1940). Our decisional law has long since held, however, that an examining trial is only necessary if requested by the suspect, and then only if no indictment has yet been presented charging the same offense. *731See Trussell v. State, 414 S.W.2d 466, 467 (Tex.Crim.App.1967) and its progeny. Moreover, a finding of no probable cause does not foreclose subsequent grand jury indictment. Compare Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1, 90 S.Ct. 1999, 26 L.Ed.2d 387 (1970). To the extent that these preliminary hearings are still held in some cases, the right to counsel is governed by pertinent statutes. But the examining trial is not itself a criminal prosecution, nor does it ever result in an official decision formally to charge the suspect with a criminal offense. Compare Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. at 228, 98 S.Ct. at 464.

.It is well to remember in this context that the word "complaint" has come to mean at least two different things under Texas law. First, it describes a sworn affidavit upon the basis of which a magistrate may issue a warrant of arrest. Tex. Code Crim.Proc.Ann. arts. 15.03(a)2, 15.04, 15.-05. In this sense, it does not refer to a criminal pleading. Woolridge v. State, 653 S.W.2d 811, 814 n. 6 (Tex.Crim.App.1983). But the term is also used to describe the entire formal charging instrument in Class C misdemeanor prosecutions and, similarly, an essential part of the charging instrument in other misdemeanor cases. Tex. Code Crim.Proc. arts. 2.04, 2.05, 21.22, 45.01, 45.16, 45.17. In this second sense, of course, the filing of a complaint, contemporaneously with the filing of an information if necessary, does mark the inception of formal adversary proceedings in Texas. Holland v. State, 623 S.W.2d 651 (Tex.Crim.App.1981); Wells v. State, 516 S.W.2d 663, 664 (Tex.Crim.App.1974); Bass v. State, 427 S.W.2d 624, 626 (Tex.Crim.App.1968) (opinion on original submission).

. Dunn is denominated a plurality opinion because it was joined by only four judges. Its ultimate result was the reversal of a conviction on Fifth Amendment grounds. Yet the three judges who dissented without opinion did not make it clear that they disagreed with the Sixth Amendment analysis. Neither did the two judges who concurred in the result with written opinion. Consequently, it is impossible to tell how many judges actually agreed with the proposition for which Dunn is cited here. All that can be gleaned from the official record is that at least four, and possibly as many as nine, did.

. Of course, nothing the Court says today will affect the implied right of suspects to counsel under the Fifth Amendment during confrontations with representatives of the State in which their privilege against self-incrimination may be jeopardized. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

. Our own Code of Criminal Procedure provides that, "a defendant in a criminal matter is entitled to be represented by counsel in an adversarial judicial proceeding.” Tex.Crim.Code Proc.Ann. art. 1.051 (Vernon Supp.1991) (emphasis added). It therefore affords less protection on its face than does the Sixth Amendment, at least during postindictment stages of the process.