Court Opinion

ID: 9858681
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:34:49.705823+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:55:27.336123
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent to this Court granting James Edward Broaddus, appellant, a new trial, and not reviewing the issue whether the court of appeals correctly held that the trial court did not err in denying his motion to suppress his confession. Such cases as Helms v. State, 484 S.W.2d 925 (Tex.Cr.App.1972); Killebrew v. State, 464 S.W.2d 838 (Tex.Cr.App.1971);1 Chavarria v. State, 425 S.W.2d 822 (Tex.Cr.App.1968), and their progeny should be expressly overruled, and a new and better rule of law should be formulated and adopted by this Court to handle such cases as this one, rather than to simply grant a new trial as it does.
The record in this cause makes it perfectly clear that all that the appellant really sought through his appeal was a review by an appellate court of the hearing and the ruling of the trial court on his motion to suppress his confession. The Houston Fourteenth Court accommodated him, but I am sure that their ruling, that “there was ample evidence to support the trial court’s finding that [his] confession was freely and voluntarily given,” did not make appellant and his counsel happy. However, what I am sure did make them happy was when the court of appeals further accommodated them by granting appellant a new trial *462because it found that his plea of guilty was involuntary under this Court’s Wooten v. State, 612 S.W.2d 561 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), Prochaska v. State, 587 S.W.2d 726 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), and Helms, supra, line of cases.
The majority states that when a defendant has received a pretrial hearing on a motion, which was overruled or denied by the trial court, and he thereafter pleads guilty or nolo contendere on the assumption that he can appeal the hearing and the trial court’s decision, an appellate court is powerless to review the contention that the trial court erred in overruling or denying his motion. However, an appellate court, including this Court, is only powerless to review such contention because of court made law which has removed the gunpowder from the gun. I would vote to put the gunpowder back into the gun and give appellate courts, including this Court, the authority to review such a contention as appellant makes in this cause.
There has got to be a better way. The majority’s decision not to formulate a better way to handle such a contention as is present in this cause, other than to simply grant a new trial, causes the wheels of justice not to move either quickly or forward, but, instead, backwards.
I dissent.
W.C. DAVIS, J., joins.

. I am unaware of a single prosecuting, defense attorney, or trial judge in this great State of Texas who believes that the rules laid down by the above decisions of this Court comport with justice and fairness. In fact, the trial and appellate attorney in Killebrew v. State, supra, was none other than my brother on the bench Judge Sam Houston Clinton. I am sure that both Judge Clinton and Judge Tom Blackwell, who was the trial judge in that cause, were both shocked and amazed when they learned that this Court would not review Judge Blackwell’s decision to overrule the defendant's motion to suppress evidence, which I am sure was quite detailed, after what I am sure was a rather lengthy hearing, but, instead, granted the defendant a new trial.