Court Opinion

ID: 9671951
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:46:00.365367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:13.282751
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
dissenting.
It is true, as Judge Miller points out in the majority opinion he authors for the *615Court, that in the concurring opinion that I filed in Bogany v. State, 661 S.W.2d 957 (Tex.Cr.App.1983), I opined: “[The Legislature] has never seen fit to give this Court or any intermediate appellate court of this State authority to assess punishment or reduce punishment assessed by a jury where the conviction was for a non-capital felony.” I also opined, by way of dictum, that “[because] the jury [in that case] could not assess a fine, in addition to the time assessed, its verdict was void at the inception.” (My emphasis).
However, the main issue in Bogany v. State, supra, was not whether the jury had returned an unauthorized verdict, concerning punishment, but, instead, was whether the court of appeals had the authority and jurisdiction to reform on direct review the judgment of conviction in that cause, by deleting therefrom the fine that had been assessed by the jury. This Court held that it did not have such authority and reversed; thus making the above-underscored dictum. Soon thereafter, I discovered that I had opined too much in the opinion that I filed in Bogany v. State, supra.
When the first opportunity presented itself, I attempted to clarify my dictum. In Ex parte Spaulding, 687 S.W.2d 741 (Tex.Cr.App.1985), I did so by filing a concurring and dissenting opinion. I wrote, not because I believed that in the future the Legislature of this State would enact a new law giving trial and appellate courts of this State the authority to reform verdicts or judgments, where the punishment assessed was not authorized by law, which it did during the recent, but last regular session of the Legislature, because I am not prescient, but did so because I believed that it was necessary to clarify the above underscored portion of the opinion that I had filed in Bogany, supra. In Ex parte Spaulding, supra, I agreed, for the reasons stated therein, with the result that the majority opinion authored by Judge Campbell had reached. I did so because the Governor had violated the division of powers that the Constitution of Texas mandates. He was thus without lawful authority to order a remission of the defendant’s sentence. However, I attempted in my opinion to point out to the other members of this Court, among other things, that there was a distinction between a void judgment and a voidable judgment. I stated that, “... barring any other facts, that which the Governor did in this cause was a valid act ...,” because he was dealing, not with a void judgment, but, instead, was dealing with a voidable judgment. My opinion, however, was not a very convincing one; it received only one vote — mine.
Judge Campbell, however, in Ex parte Spaulding, supra, made no bones about what he stated or what he intended to state for this Court, when it came to “Bogany error.” Judge Campbell, unequivocally, and without any ifs, ands, or buts, expressly held for the Court that “Bogany error” rendered a judgment of conviction totally and absolutely void, void ab initio if you please, thus relegating such to be equivalent to a dead limb on a tree, with such being vulnerable to being chopped off at any time, or, to put it in legalese language, “[I]t is a nullity from the beginning, and may be treated as such without further proceedings to have such nullity judicially declared.” Teague, J., Concurring and Dissenting Opinion in Ex parte Spaulding, supra.
After quoting from Black’s Law Dictionary 1745 (Fourth Ed. 1968, West Publishing Co.), Judge Campbell then reemphasized the Court’s holding: “Void is further defined in Black’s as that which nothing can cure,” (My emphasis), and implicitly applied such definition to the judgment in that cause.
Furthermore, but in order to make sure that nobody misunderstood what he was saying, or what he intended to state for the Court, Judge Campbell further stated: “Such judgment and sentence being void, the error is incurable and any subsequent attempt at remitting (reforming, in this instance) the fine portion of a void sentence is also void.” (My emphasis.) Unquestionably, Judge Campbell did not mince any words about the subject, and made clear to *616all what this Court was holding when it came to “Bogany error,” namely, that if there was “Bogany error” in the verdict of the jury, such rendered the conviction void ab initio.
I pause to point out that only Judge White dissented, without opinion, in Ex parte Spaulding, supra. Judge Clinton, joined by Presiding Judge Onion, filed a concurring opinion, opining that “we need not strain [today] to distinguish the judgments in those cases from the one here by calling the former ‘voidable’ and the latter ‘void.’ ” I pointed out in my opinion that “In this instance, I believe that it is necessary that we so strain.” However, Judge Clinton, like Judge Campbell did, also did not mince any words about the matter, and told us what the “true” rule was: “The true rule in Texas is that an appellate court ‘may not reduce the punishment assessed by the jury.’ ” And, he may be right, notwithstanding that his opinion received only two votes: his and Presiding Judge Onion’s.
Judge Miller, the author of the majority opinion, who did not write in Ex parte Spaulding, supra, implicitly declares for the Court today that even though this Court made the above express and unequivocal statements in Ex parte Spaulding, supra, that that is not what the Court actually meant to state, but the Court, instead, actually intended to state the following: “In this sense, [when an unauthorized verdict is returned by a jury and accepted by the trial judge], a judgment and sentence [are] ... void since there [is] no way to cure the infirmity,” and reasons that because of the recently enacted legislation “Bogany error” can now be cured by reformation. Facially, this sounds all well and good. However, that is the problem with the majority opinion; it is only facial; it lacks depth and complete analysis.
Presiding Judge Onion of this Court is often prone to utter, when he reads something in law that to him is without legal foundation: “Color Me Amazed.” After reading what Judge Miller has written, I am compelled to echo Judge Onion’s exclamation.
For the reasons that I stated in the concurring and dissenting opinion that I filed in Ex parte Spaulding, supra, now that the Legislature has given this Court, among others, the authority to reform an unauthorized verdict, I am unable to facially state that any judgment of conviction occurring after the effective date of that legislation is coram non judice or brutum fulmen, rather than being only a voidable judgment, subject only to direct attack on appeal.
However, but in light of what Judge Clinton has stated, it should be incumbent upon this Court to discuss why that is so, rather than to hide behind the time-worn expression that “even though I said it, that is not what I intended to say, because I meant to say the following.”1
In light of what this Court stated in Ex parte Spaulding, supra, if for no other reason than for this Court to save face, I would only apply the new legislation prospective from the date it became effective, and not make it retroactive as the majority does. I dissent to such action by the majority.
I also dissent because of the failure of the majority to discuss in its opinion the issue that Judge Clinton raises in the concurring opinion he has filed, namely, that no court has the authority or power to “monkey” with a jury’s verdict on punishment.
In general, because I cannot adopt what the majority has stated, I must respectfully dissent.

. Cf. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.