Court Opinion

ID: 9672692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:58:59.337582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:17.877165
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
We seem to be disposing of each cause implicating ramifications of our decision in Ex parte Crisp, 661 S.W.2d 944 (Tex.Cr.App.1983), on an ad hoc basis. Thus Smith won because he swore that had he known the maximum punishment later found to be available was one half of what he was told it was he would not have entered into a plea bargain “based on the wrong range of punishment.” Ex parte Smith, 678 S.W.2d 78 (Tex.Cr.App.1984). Hurwitz lost because he entered into a plea bargain based on one range of punishment or another — no one knew for sure which would ultimately turn out to be correct — but he gained the minimum in either case. Hurwitz v. State, (Tex.Cr.App.No. 742-84, delivered April 10, 1985). See Fuentes v. State, 688 S.W.2d 542 (Tex.Cr.App.1985); see also Hernandez v. State, 669 S.W.2d 734 (Tex.Cr.App.1984) (judgment imposing punishment assessed by verdict of jury reversed because within higher range than authorized by revived provision of Texas Controlled Substances Act) and Uribe and Correa v. State, 688 S.W.2d 534 (Tex.Cr.App.1985). And as I understand its opinion today, though like Hurwitz appellant was aware of his prospects under Crisp, the majority says he loses because there is not a plea bargain as to punishment and therefore nothing for applicant “to evaluate.”1 If there is any common principle at work in all this, it has not manifested itself.2
*874Concurring in Hurwitz, supra, I pointed out, “But for the fact that H.B. 730 was subsequently found unconstitutional there would be no question about what the prosecution and accused agreed to do and did and what the trial court ultimately did,” and added, “[T]hat the statute was later found unconstitutional would not ipso facto render an otherwise free and voluntary plea ‘involuntary,’ ” although other factors might require reversal of the conviction. In the cause at bar I do not find any reversible feature.
Obviously the State was prepared to prove that' applicant possessed and delivered four hundred or more grams of cocaine. In this case and others like it we should follow the rationale of Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970), viz:
“[AJbsent misrepresentation or other impermissible conduct by state agents ..., a voluntary plea of guilty intelligently made in light of the then applicable law does not become vulnerable because later judicial decisions indicate that the plea rested on a faulty premise. A plea of guilty triggered by the expectations of a competently counseled defendant that the State will have a strong case against him is not subject to later attack because the defendant’s lawyer [and the trial judge] correctly advised him with respect to the then existing penalties but later pronouncements of the courts, as in this case, hold that the maximum penalty for the crime in question was less than was reasonably assumed at the time the plea was entered.”
Id., U.S. at 757, S.Ct. at 1473. The Supreme Court found no constitutional requirement “that a defendant must be permitted to disown his solemn admissions in open court that he committed the act with which he is charged simply because it later develops that ... the maximum penalty then assumed applicable has been held inapplicable in subsequent judicial decisions.” Id., U.S. at 757, S.Ct. at 1474. Nor, so far as I am aware, is there any such statutory requirement.
Finally, the majority would have this Court remand the cause for reassessment of punishment. Dubitante, I defer to the collective judgment of the majority.
For these reasons I concur in the order of the Court.

. Of course there was a plea agreement: In exchange for his plea of guilty the State abandoned and dismissed two of three paragraphs in the indictment alleging aggravated delivery of cocaine, and reduced the charge in the first paragraph to possession of four hundred or more grams of cocaine.

. In the instant cause the supreme irony is that since applicant was aware of the uncertain state of the law he does not get a new trial, but because the trial judge expressed a similar *874awareness the court must reassess punishment. One wonders how the penalty range provided by the 1981 amendment “exerted on the court’s discretion a distinct pressure toward a higher punishment,” yet did not likewise influence applicant in his decision to plead guilty.