Court Opinion

ID: 9961935
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-21 17:12:31.805672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:19:23.799984
License: Public Domain

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS
                        OF TEXAS

                                   NO. WR-95,378-01

                        EX PARTE FELIX DELACRUZ, Applicant

            ON APPLICATION FOR A WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS
          CAUSE NO. DCR-5914-19A IN THE 154TH DISTRICT COURT
                         FROM LAMB COUNTY

          KEEL, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which KELLER, P.J., and YEARY
and SLAUGHTER, JJ., joined.

                                DISSENTING OPINION

       Here we have an involuntary plea claim based on ineffective assistance of counsel

(IAC). Applicant says he would not have pled guilty but for his attorney’s bad advice

about parole. The habeas court found against Applicant on his but-for claim, and that

finding is supported by the record, so I would defer to it. Since the Court does not, I

respectfully dissent.

I. Background
                                                                        Delacruz Dissent—2

       Applicant repeatedly had sex with his 11-year-old stepdaughter and eventually

impregnated her. Two years after giving birth, she revealed that he was the father of her

baby. DNA paternity testing confirmed the revelation with greater than 99% certainty.

When a Texas Ranger questioned him in a recorded interview about the reported sexual

abuse, Applicant suggested that the victim might have forced herself on him while he was

in a diabetic coma.

       Applicant was charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child. The punishment

range was 25 to 99 years or life. The prosecution first offered 60 years for a guilty plea

but reduced the offer to 40 years. Applicant’s attorney twice told him that he would be

eligible for parole after serving half the sentence. Applicant accepted the 40-year offer.

Afterward, the attorney realized that there was no parole eligibility for continuous sexual

abuse of a child, and Applicant told him that he would not have pled guilty if he had

known there was no parole, a claim he reiterates in habeas. The habeas court rejected

the claim; “Applicant does not sufficiently prove the error made by trial counsel would

have changed his decision to plead guilty, had the erroneous advice not been given him.”

II. IAC and Involuntary Plea

       To succeed on an IAC claim, a defendant must show both deficient performance

and prejudice. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984). Prejudice means a

reasonable probability of a different outcome and depends on the totality of the evidence.

Id. at 695. For an involuntary-plea claim based on IAC, prejudice depends on the effect

of the deficient performance on the decision to plead guilty. Ex parte Barnaby, 475
                                                                         Delacruz Dissent—3

S.W.3d 316, 324-25 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015) (per curiam) (equating the prejudice standard

with the materiality standard for false evidence). “[A] plea is not involuntary simply

because a defendant does not correctly assess every relevant factor entering into his or

her decision.” Id. at 323. Rather, the whole record must be examined. Id.

       The claimant must show that rejecting the plea bargain “would have been rational

under the circumstances.” Ex parte Torres, 483 S.W.3d 35, 48 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016)

(quoting Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 372 (2010)). The rationality of rejecting the

plea bargain will largely depend on predictions about the likely outcome of trial and the

relative risks and benefits of accepting the plea offer. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 59

(1985) (noting that prejudice will turn on predictions about the likely outcome of trial if

there had been no deficient performance); Torres, 483 S.W.3d at 48 (noting that relative

risks and benefits must be examined).

       For example, Torres’s claim that he would have insisted on trial if he had been

correctly advised about immigration consequences was unsupported because such

insistence would not have been rational. Torres, 483 S.W.3d at 51. The State had a

strong case against him for two felonies, Torres suggested no possible defense to either

charge, his bargain called for no jail time and yielded a dismissal of other charges, a

conviction at trial would have carried the same immigration consequences as the guilty

plea did, and immigration consequences were unimportant to him. Torres, 483 S.W.3d at

50-51. For similar reasons, Barnaby’s claim that he would have insisted on trial was

unsupported even though the lab results in his drug case were presumptively false.
                                                                          Delacruz Dissent—4

Barnaby, 475 S.W.3d at 327. He faced multiple drug charges untainted by any such

results, his other cases might have imposed more onerous parole-eligibility requirements

on him, and sentences in those cases could have been stacked after a trial. Barnaby, 475

S.W.3d at 326.

       But insistence on trial may be rational in light of a plausible but unexplored

affirmative defense. Ex parte Imoudu, 284 S.W.3d 866, 870 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009).

And it may be rational considering a fatal pleading error made by a seemingly unaware

prosecutor. Ex parte Lewis, 537 S.W.3d 917, 922 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017). Insistence

on trial may also be rational depending on the defendant’s priorities. Ex parte Aguilar,

537 S.W.3d 122, 129 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017) (upholding finding of but-for insistence on

trial where immigration consequences were supremely important to Aguilar, and he

believed his defense attorney was advising him in accord with an immigration attorney’s

advice).

       In Ex parte Moussazadeh, 361 S.W.3d 684, 692 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012), we cited

only Moussazadeh’s habeas affidavit when we credited his claim that he would have

insisted on trial but for his attorney’s bad advice about his parole eligibility. But there

was more to the record than that, and it supported our conclusion.

       Moussazadeh was a juvenile offender charged with a capital murder in which he

was the lookout, not the gunman, and he cooperated with the prosecution of one of his

co-defendants; the record suggested that parole eligibility was key to his decision to plead
                                                                                          Delacruz Dissent—5

guilty; and the advice he got veered from the law’s requirements. 1 Id. at 687-88. So

even if the Moussazadeh opinion found prejudice based solely on the habeas affidavit, the

whole record supported the finding.

III. Analysis

        The record here is conflicting; it supports either a negative or affirmative finding

on Applicant’s claim he would have insisted on trial.

        On the one hand, Applicant asked his attorney twice about parole, and his

attorney’s advice about it was off base—he told him he would be eligible after serving

half his time when in fact he would never be eligible; so Applicant was misadvised about

an important matter. On the other hand, conviction was likely given the DNA test,

Applicant suggests no defensive strategy, and he points to nothing that would have helped

him beat the State’s 40-year offer. On the contrary, his suggestion that he was victimized

by his stepdaughter’s predations risked alienating a jury.

        Thus, although it has competing elements, the record here supports the habeas

court’s negative finding on Applicant’s claim that he would have insisted on trial. We

1 Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Articles 42.12 3g (community supervision) and 42.18 (parole) were amended 11 days
prior to the murder. Moussazadeh’s attorney told him the pre-amendment rules. This was the result:
 Parole eligibility             Murder; life sentence                              Capital murder; life sentence
                                With deadly weapon finding — 15 years flat;
 What he was told               Without deadly weapon — consideration of good      35 years flat
                                conduct time to get to 15 years
 What was required              30 years flat regardless of deadly weapon finding  40 years flat
The relevant parts of both articles were amended by the same act. Act of June 19, 1993, 73rd Leg., R.S., ch. 900,
§§4.01, 6.01 1993 Tex. Gen. Laws 3716-17, 3761. Both articles have since been repealed (Art. 42.18 repealed
1997; Art. 42.12 repealed 2017).
                                                                          Delacruz Dissent—6

should defer to that finding. See Ex parte Weinstein, 421 S.W.3d 656, 664 (Tex. Crim.

App. 2014). Since the Court instead rejects it, I respectfully dissent.

Filed: April 17, 2024

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