Court Opinion

ID: 9762869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:33:04.515059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:38.176786
License: Public Domain

WOODLEY, Judge,
dissenting.
The body of the amendatory act which the majority opinion nullifies as being in violation of Art. III, Sec. 35 of the Texas Constitution, re-enacts Art. 768 V.A.C.C.P. unchanged except for the addition of two words, “and misdemeanor.”
The amendment is clearly germane to the purpose stated in *8the caption quoted in the majority opinion and in the emergency clause, which reads:
“The fact that under existing law credit for time spent in jail between arrest and sentence or pending appeal is only applicable in felony cases, creates an emergency and an imperative public necessity that the Constitutional Rule requiring bills to be read on three several days in each House be suspended; and said Rule is hereby suspended, and this Act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage, and it is so enacted.”
The rule of statutory construction recognized both by this court and the courts having jurisdiction in civil cases is that if the provisions of the body of the act are germane in any degree to the purpose stated in the caption, the act does not offend against Art. III, Sec. 35, of the Constitution of Texas. Footnotes 12 and 14, 39 Texas Jur. p. 89, list many authorities so holding.
When the title expresses the main subject dealt with in the act, it embraces any lawful means for the accomplishment of the legislative object. 39 Texas Jur. p. 91, Sec. 42.
Any provision calculated to carry into effect the declared object of an act is unobjectionable, although not specifically indicated in the title. 39 Texas Jur. p. 91, Sec. 42, and cases cited under Footnote 7.
The rules mentioned are recognized and applied in the cases cited in support of the majority holding.
Though the amendatory act is clearly constitutional and requires that a sentence be pronounced in misdemeanor as well as felony cases, it does not follow that the sentence must be pronounced in order for this court to have jurisdiction of an appeal.
We have recognized the authority of the legislature to provide for appeals to this court from judgments of conviction which are not final because no sentence has been pronounced. Gossett v. State, 162 Texas Cr. Rep. 52, 282 S.W. 2d 59.
I could agree to a holding that this court has jurisdiction of a misdemeanor appeal because Art. 769 V.A.C.C.P., which regulates the time in reference to appeal for pronouncement of sentence, does not require that sentence be pronounced before *9the appeal is taken. But I am unwilling to agree for this court to strike down an act of the legislature which is in conformity with the Constitution.
ON appellant’s motion for rehearing
MORRISON, Presiding Judge.
In the original opinion we did not discuss several of appellant’s contentions. Appellant urges that the court excluded testimony material to his defense and, in doing so, commented upon the weight of appellant’s testimony in the presence of the jury which prejudiced his rights.
If, as appellant contends, he was denied the right to name all those who were present at Manning’s Cafe, where appellant had been until just prior to the time of his arrest by two officers who said he was intoxicated, the judgment should be reversed.
Some of the persons who were at Manning’s Cafe testified that they saw appellant there and that he was not drunk. He should not have been denied the right to name others who were there and to use the state’s failure to call them as witnesses as a circumstance favorable to his claim that he was sober.
It does not appear that such was the court’s ruling. Appellant testified he could name 17 or 18 that were at the cafe, and he named about that number. These were named before and after the court inquired as to the purpose and whether they would be called by appellant as witnesses.
What the court interrupted and declined to permit was appellant’s unresponsive statement that he got the bottle of beer found in his pickup for Roy Duckworth “when he was on one of those walking drunks.” Duckworth was not one of those named as present at the cafe.
Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this cause originally, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.