Court Opinion

ID: 9667556
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:49:19.636454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:38.883595
License: Public Domain

DICE, Judge.
Relator, an inmate of the Texas Prison System, seeks his release by writ of habeas corpus from confinement under certain judgments of conviction entered against him in the Criminal District Court No. 2 of Harris County on July 19, 1955, in Causes Nos. 74301, 74302, 74551, and 74554, upon his plea of guilty to offenses less than capital and waiver of a trial by jury.
Relator alleges that the judgments of conviction are void because the records fail to reflect that the district attorney executed a written consent to the waiver of a jury trial in accordance with the provisions of Art. 10a, V.A.C.C.P., and that in fact no such consent was executed.
The writ was granted by the Honorable Langston G. King, Judge of Criminal District Court No. 2 of Harris County, and *34made returnable to this court in accordance with the terms of Art. 119, V.A.C.C.P.
Each of the judgments contains the following recitation: “and the Defendant * * * having the consent and approval of the Court and Attorney for the State, waives a jury herein and in open Court pleaded guilty to the charge contained in the Indictment herein.”
Ray Clark, Deputy District Clerk in the Criminal District Clerk’s Office, upon being called as a witness by the relator testified that he had examined the papers in the four cases involved and failed to find in any of them a signed and executed waiver of the district attorney or any assistant giving his written consent and approval to a waiver of a trial by jury. He further testified that when he acted as clerk in the court the district attorney filed written waivers in all pleas of guilty; that in the past year he had seen three or four hundred waivers filed; and that subsequent to the date of relator’s conviction the papers in the cases had been moved from one building to another.
In support of said judgments, the state called former Assistant District Attorney Thoms C. Dunn, who testified that, on July 19, 1955, he was acting in such capacity, and was associated with the district attorney’s office for three and one-half years prior to that time; that he was aware that a written waiver had to be signed before a defendant, pleading guilty, could waive a jury; that it was his practice to always file the written waiver; that for a while it was the custom to sign the waiver in blank, and when it was found out that the defendant desired to plead guilty the assistant district attorney would fill out the name and give it to the clerk, sometimes prior to and sometimes after the court admonished the defendant. He further testified that he had no independent recollection of whether he filled out a waiver in relator’s cases or not.
Judge King testified that it was the practice in his court for the state’s attorneys to file a written waiver in cases where the defendant was pleading guilty and waiving a jury; and that a year or two before relator’s cases were tried he had admonished . the attorneys for the state and the clerk to “watch out for the waiver constantly and the filing of the written consent on the part of the State.”
We have concluded that the relator has not shown a failure to comply with Art. 10a, supra.
*35The judgments of conviction under which relator is being confined recite that relator’s waiver of a jury was with the consent and approval of the attorney for the state. The judgments therefore are unlike the judgments in Ex Parte Dooley, 157 Texas Cr. R. 57, 246 S.W. 2d 631, relied upon by the relator, where there was an entire absence of any reference in the judgments to the requirements of Art. 10a, supra.
The record is undisputed that both before and at the time the relator was convicted it was the practice of the district attorney’s office to file written consents in jury waiver trials. Proof of this fact is unlike the proof made in Ex Parte Foster, 162 Texas Cr. R. 191, 283 S.W. 2d 761, also relied upon by the relator, where a practice of not filing waivers by the district attorney was shown.
The relief prayed for is denied.
Opinion approved by the Court.