Court Opinion

ID: 9680580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:34:25.838335+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:29.434084
License: Public Domain

MORRISON, Judge
(dissenting).
When petitioner’s conviction reached this Court on appeal, the writer dissented to the affirmance on the grounds that petitioner had once been in jeopardy and therefore could not, as I saw it, be constitutionally tried again for the same offense. I relied upon the holding in Doggett v. State, 130 Tex.Cr.R. 208, 93 S.W.2d 399, which I still feel is controlling. However, since the rendition of the opinion in petitioner’s case, this Court has had a comparable situation before us in Garza v. State, 369 S.W.2d 36. Therein we said:
“To affirm this conviction in the light of the record would be to hold that, for an offense committed before he reached the age of 17 years, the offender who has committed no other offense against the law may, upon petition of the district attorney, be adjudged a delinquent child and held in custody as such, and without regard to how he may respond to the guidance and control afforded him under the Juvenile Act, be indicted, tried and convicted for the identical offense after he reaches the age of 17.
“We sustain appellant’s contention that such a conviction violates the principles of fundamental fairness and constitutes a deprivation of due process under the 14th Amendment.”
If Doggett v. State, supra, does not control, then surely what we said in Garza v. State, supra, should.
However, my brethren do not agree and this petitioner, who served his term in the State School for Boys for an offense committed when he was 13 years old, who was released and two years later was indicted for an offense growing out of the same transaction, now must continue to be confined under his life term conviction. I have stated my position fully in my dissent in Ex parte Sawyer, Tex.Cr.App., 386 S. W.2d 275.
Petitioner is before this Court without a lawyer and only the writer to speak for him, and I respectfully dissent from the order of this Court denying the relief prayed for.