Court Opinion

ID: 9653115
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:39:01.309086+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:56.434935
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
Some of us have protested the emasculation of Article 1.13 and 1.15, V.A.C.C.P. See, e.g., Ex parte Collier, 614 S.W.2d 429, 435 and 436 (Tex.Cr.App.1981) (Clinton, J., concurring and Teague, J., dissenting). But the 1931 legislative act from which they are derived continues to be honored *685more in its breach — even to the extent of calling a violation of Article 1.15 “trial error." 1
Today the majority would have this Court declare that when the trial judge fails to cause the court to approve in writing the waiver and consent of an accused prescribed by Article 1.15, proof may be taken on some later occasion that the trial court did in fact approve the waiver and consent. I venture the case is rare indeed in which such proof cannot be made. Thus an application for writ of habeas corpus takes on the character of a belated motion for new trial, and a hearing thereon becomes an occasion to develop supplementary proof “to make the record speak the truth” in order to remove “trial error” from the cause.
Rather than further abuse the office and dignity of The Great Writ with that kind of charade, I would again opt for the resolution proposed by me in Ex parte Collier, supra, viz:
“I would hold complaints about failure to comply with [the procedural requirement that the trial court confirm its approval in writing] are not cognizable by postcon-viction writ of habeas corpus for, even if factually supported, they will not make restraint under the judgment of conviction illegal.”
For those reasons I join the order of the Court.
W.C. DAVIS, McCORMICK, CAMPBELL, and WHITE, JJ., join this opinion as well as the opinion of the Court.

. Ex parte Duran, 581 S.W.2d 683 (Tex.Cr.App.1979) is probably the first explication of that notion of "trial error.” The Court panel, manifestly struggling to avoid granting relief under Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978) and Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19, 98 S.Ct. 2151, 57 L.Ed.2d 15 (1978), put it this way:
"This situation is different from that presented in Burks, in which the trial court’s error was in failing to grant a motion for new trial which was based on insufficiency of the evidence. In the applicant’s case, the basic error was not failure to recognize, after the State had rested, that the evidence was insufficient; it was error in admitting evidence. We think that this basic error, upon which our earlier reversal rested, was therefore trial error. Properly construed, our holding [that 'the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction’] was not that the State had failed to prove its case, but that it had been permitted erroneously to prove its case through incorrect receipt of evidence. Cf. Burks, 437 U.S. at 15, 98 S.Ct. 2141, quoted above. A reversal for such trial error as was committed in this case is not tantamount to a holding by this Court that a directed judgment of acquittal should have entered. It was a holding that the applicant should have a fair adjudication of his guilt free from error.”
One must observe that the evidence alluded to was a stipulation agreed to by appellant and admitted when his counsel expressly stated, “We have no objection to that, Your Honor.” Then also came in a lab report and the controlled substance, again with “No objection.” They seemed satisfied at the time to assist in making a record of evidence on which appellant would get "a fair adjudication of his guilt free from error.” (All emphasis is mine unless otherwise indicated.)