Court Opinion

ID: 9679627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:00:34.357216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:17.046175
License: Public Domain

McDONALD, Judge
(dissenting).
While I set forth my views fully in my dissenting opinion, I did take the position that this case was présentéd to us on the sole question of former or double jeopardy.
As pointed out in the majority opinion on rehearing, the case was decided by the majority holding appellant’s conviction in violation of the principles of fundamental fairness and a deprivation of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. In its motion, the State says that the Court was in error in so deciding, and the State urges the Court to decide the case on the basis of former jeopardy. And yet, the State, through its assistant District attorney, admitted in oral argument before this Court that the trial court’s action did constitute former jeopardy. This line of reasoning on the part of the State virtually amounts to a confession of error and leaves the writer with little support. Regardless, I still feel constrained to once more express my views.
To me, the basic difference between the majority opinion and the State’s contention on rehearing may be summarized as meaning that the majority feels that the appellant’s conviction was in violation of the principles of fundamental fairness and a deprivation of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment because the appellant was confined and restrained of his liberty after the adjudication of delinquency by being placed in the Gatesville State School and then being returned for trial in the Criminal District Court; whereas, if the appellant had not been sent to Gatesville but had been given over to the custody of his parents, then he would not have been confined and restrained of his liberty and would not have been deprived of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment and the principles of fundamental fairness. He would still be in the position of pleading former jeopardy because of the two adjudications. I wonder if the majority would hold as they did if appellant had just been given over to the custody of his parents instead of being incarcerated at Gatesville. I think the majority opinion is bottomed on former jeopardy without saying it.
So long as this Court continues to engage in “legal fiction,” then the cases of Wood v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 349 S.W.2d 605; Martinez v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 350 S.W.2d 929; Perry v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 350 S.W.2d 21; and Hultin v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 351 S.W.2d 248, should be allowed to stand and should not be overruled.
Since the majority opinion effectively does away with the statutory definition that *44Juvenile Courts and juvenile proceedings are civil actions, and by their opinion make criminal courts out of Juvenile Courts, then it necessarily follows that if this Court is going to apply the rules of criminal procedure to juvenile cases, Judge Morrison’s dissenting opinion in Martinez, supra, correctly enunciates the law. It is clear to me that Martinez would not have been tried in a District Court or a Criminal District Court for the offense of murder after he had been previously tried for the offense of assault with intent to rob.
!' The opinion of the majority could well lead to pleas of former jeopardy being effectively urged by persons previously adjudicated insane. These persons, when brought to trial for the offense of murder, after a restoration of their sanity, could contend that they had been confined and restrained of their liberty after an adjudication determining them insane.
I express the further view that jeopardy can no more attach in a preliminary hearing in a District Court to try the sole issue of sanity or insanity of a defendant under indictment for the offense of murder than it can attach in a case like the one before us. Simply because the Juvenile Court had jurisdiction of the person of the juvenile does not give it jurisdiction of the offense of murder, a felony, any more than a District Court trying the sanity issue at the preliminary hearing has jurisdiction at that particular time of the offense of murder. The adjudication in the Juvenile Court is for one purpose, and one purpose only, and that purpose is to determine the status of the juvenile; namely, is he a delinquent child. The question of his guilt or innocence of the offense of murder is not before the Juvenile Court any more than the offense of murder is before the District Court in the preliminary hearing on the sole issue of sanity. I cannot make a distinction in these two parallel situations.
For the reasons stated herein and those previously stated in my dissenting opinion on original submission, I respectfully dissent.