Court Opinion

ID: 9680392
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:31:24.183043+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:28.421919
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON APPELLANT’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
ODOM, Judge.
This is an appeal from an order revoking probation. On June 18,1980, the judgment was affirmed in a per curiam opinion. Subsequently the case was submitted for rehearing on the court’s own motion. In our opinion of May 20,1981, the original per curiam opinion was withdrawn, and, after consideration of the issue of whether the motion to revoke was fundamentally defective, the judgment was affirmed.
In the trial court appellant presented a motion to suppress, which challenged the search warrant. After the trial court denied the motion to suppress, appellant entered a plea of true to the motion to revoke. In the previously withdrawn per curiam opinion the court held that appellant’s grounds of error challenging the search warrant presented no error because the order revoking probation was based on the plea of true, not on the fruits of the search. On rehearing appellant asserts his plea was *909entered on condition that he be allowed to appeal the ruling on the motion to suppress. The record of the proceedings in the trial court supports this factual assertion. In view of the holding on original submission that the ruling on the motion to suppress could not be raised on appeal, appellant now argues his plea of true was not knowingly and voluntarily entered and that he was denied due process.
The State contends the issue may not be raised for the first time on rehearing. Mooney v. State, 615 S.W.2d 776 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), is contrary to the State’s position:
“In Wooten v. State, 612 S.W.2d 561, 563 (Tex.Cr.App.) we held:
“ ‘If the plea was entered with such an agreement or understanding that the merits of the motion would be preserved for appeal, then the trial court was not authorized by State law to accept such a plea.... As a matter of constitutional law a guilty plea cannot be said to have been voluntary if it was induced by an agreement approved by the court that a question could be appealed when that agreement could not be fulfilled.’ (Emphasis added.)
“Because the trial court lacked authority to accept Dean Mooney’s conditional plea, the conviction must be set aside even though the issue was not raised in appellant’s brief. Killebrew v. State, 464 S.W.2d 838 (Tex.Cr.App.). Furthermore, since the plea was involuntary as a matter of constitutional law, Wooten, supra, the conviction violates due process and would be subject to collateral attack. See Henderson v. Morgan, 426 U.S. 637, 96 S.Ct. 2253, 49 L.Ed.2d 108 (1976).”
Although Mooney involved a conviction after a plea of nolo contendere, while this case presents a revocation of probation after a plea of true, we do not find this to be a significant distinction. Both pleas were conditional, and the trial court lacked authority to accept a conditional plea. The same reasoning as relied on in Mooney requires reversal here.
The motion for rehearing is granted and the judgment is reversed.