Court Opinion

ID: 9668648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:20:40.142605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:46.822231
License: Public Domain

ON APPELLANT’S motion for rehearing
WOODLEY, Presiding Judge.
Appellant contends that the indictment is fatally defective and will not support an enhancement of punishment under Art. 62 P.C. He cites and quotes from the majority opinion on rehearing in Granado v. State, 168 Tex. Cr. Rep. 525, 329 S.W. 2d 864, 868:
“It has now been called to our attention that the indictment before us fails to allege that the offense set forth in paragraph 4 was a like offense or one of the same nature as the primary offense charged. This Court has repeatedly held that such is an essential allegation in order to sustain a conviction under Art. 62 Vernon’s Ann. P.C. The omitted allegation is one of substance, and its omission is fatal.”
The case before us demonstrates the fallacy of the quoted holding.
Art, 62 P.C. provides. “If it be shown on the trial of a felony less than capital that the defendant has been before convicted of the same offense, or one of the same nature, the punishment on such second or other subsequent conviction shall be the highest which is affixed to the commission of such offenses in ordinary cases.”
The indictment herein alleged the offense of robbery by assault, a felony less than capital.
The prior conviction alleged to enhance the punishment was for a like offense; robbery by assault, a felony.
As a matter of law the offense in the prior conviction was “the same offense, or one of the same nature” as the offense for which appellant was tried and convicted.
Reference is made to the writer’s dissent in Granado v. State, *420supra, and cases there cited, and to his concurring opinion in Gibbs v. State, 336 S.W. 2d 625, 626.
Had the indictment further alleged that the prior conviction for robbery by assault was for an offense of like character and of the same nature as that charged against him, to-wit robbery by assault, no additional proof would have been required to sustain such allegation and no evidence to the contrary could have been produced.
We agree that the court should be reluctant to overrule its prior decisions. However, when a prior holding is clearly wrong, the court should not cast itself in the position of relying upon its previous errors to justify another.
The quoted holding in Granado v. State, supra, is overruled, as is appellant’s motion for rehearing.