Court Opinion

ID: 9680425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:31:45.132139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:28.493910
License: Public Domain

McCORMICK, Judge,
dissenting.
As noted by the majority, applicant’s original conviction in Cause Number 278,-097 was reversed because of fundamental error in the indictment. The Court then concludes that since the fundamentally defective indictment case was pending on appeal in this Court, the trial court’s action on the new indictment was a nullity.
“Once this court has acquired jurisdiction, it is only by judgment of this court that jurisdiction is restored to the district court,” opines the majority. But, how can this Court restore jurisdiction which this Court held did not exist? In reversing Cause Number 278,097, the Court held that the trial court was without jurisdiction due to a fundamental defect in the indictment, and dismissed the prosecution. Today the majority concludes that even though the trial court never had jurisdiction in Cause Number 278,097 and even though the trial court’s action in Cause Number 278,097 was null and void, the trial court was without jurisdiction to act in Cause Number 298,435 because of the “outstanding conviction.”
Such an illogical conclusion points again to the need of this Court to re-examine its position with regard to fundamentally defective indictments. That position is expressed in Judge Odom’s concurring opinion in Ex parte Cannon, 546 S.W.2d 266 (Tex.Cr.App.1977). There a general review of rules governing the power of courts to act, and the necessity for proper invocation of “jurisdiction” is found. Judge Odom said:
“All jurisdictional requirements must be satisfied or the court’s action, other than dismissal, is void. ‘There are three facts that seem to be absolutely necessary to the jurisdiction of the court or as jurisdictional questions:
First, the court must have jurisdiction of the person; second, of the subject-matter; and, third, to render the particular judgment rendered. Otherwise, the prosecution will be void, as also the judgment.’ (Emphasis added) Emery v. State, supra. ‘If the court has no jurisdiction, it should proceed no further with the case other than to dismiss it for want of power to hear and determine the controversy. In such a case, any order or decree entered, other than one of dismissal, is void.’ (Emphasis added).”
Although this is not the proper case in which to re-examine the rule that the absence of any element of the offense from an indictment fails to invoke the trial court’s jurisdiction, it does dramatically point up such need. As Oliver Wendall Holmes said, “It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind limitation of the past.” Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv.L.Rev. 457, 468 (1897). So it is with the archaic rules of pleading this Court continues to follow.
I dissent.
CAMPBELL, J., joins in this dissent.