Court Opinion

ID: 9659322
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:40:28.516119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:06.593332
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting.
Because the State failed to prove every element of its motion to revoke, I respectfully dissent. A trial judge cannot be a witness in a case.1 Nor may the trial judge merely pronounce an essential element of the State’s proof.2 There is no evidence in the record from any source that Appellant is the same person who was convicted of possession of marijuana and placed on community supervision. Nor is there anything in the record from which the trial court as factfinder could legitimately infer that Appellant was that person. From my reading of the record, no one asked if her name was Margaret Elizabeth Cherry, and no one testified that the person sitting at the counsel table was Margaret Elizabeth Cherry. No one testified that the person sitting at the counsel table was the same person convicted of possession of marijuana on July 8, 2004. No one testified that he or she even recognized the person sitting at the counsel table. No one read the motion to revoke on the record, and no one waived reading the motion. The person at the counsel table was not asked to enter a plea to the allegations in the motion, and she did not sua sponte enter a plea. She is never identified by name, date of birth, photograph, or fingerprint, or in any other manner.
Although one probation officer testified that he supervised the “Defendant in this cause, Margaret Elizabeth Cherry,” he did not testify that she was in the courtroom *921or that he had any personal knowledge of her conviction or her being the person placed on community supervision. Appellant’s agreement that she was previously arraigned on the motion to revoke is not an admission or even circumstantial evidence that she was previously convicted of the underlying offense and placed on community supervision, nor can the testimony of the probation officers support an inference that she is the same person who was originally placed on probation.
Nor could the trial court take judicial notice3 of that “fact” because nothing in the record shows that “fact” — no photograph, no admission, no fingerprint that was properly identified, and nothing reflecting even that the trial judge remembered Appellant.4 As our sister court pointed out in a similar case almost twenty years ago,
In probation revocation proceedings, it is the state’s burden to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the probationer has committed a breach of her conditions of probation, and where the state fails to meet this burden, the trial court is without authority to revoke the probation involved. In the present case, the probation revocation hearing was held before the same judge, in the same court, which originally convicted McCowan and placed her on probation.
In Barrientez v. State, [500 S.W.2d 474 (Tex.Crim.App.1973)] it was held that where the same judge presides over a criminal trial of a person who is on probation, and also presides at a subsequent motion to revoke probation hearing, the judge may take judicial notice of the evidence presented at the criminal trial and use that evidence as proof that the accused committed the offense at issue in the criminal trial when such offense is alleged as a basis for revoking probation. However, the rule announced in Barrientez has not been used to supply missing proof that the person before the court in the revocation hearing is the same person who was previously placed on probation. We decline to apply the rule in Barrientez to supply this missing evidence.5
I would likewise hold that the proof that Appellant is the same person who was previously placed on probation is absent, sustain Appellant’s sole issue, and reverse the trial court’s judgment. Because the majority does not, I respectfully dissent.

. Tex.R. Evid. 605 (“The judge presiding at the trial may not testify in that trial as a witness. No objection need be made in order to preserve the point.”); see McGill v. State, 200 S.W.3d 325, 329 (Tex.App.-Dallas 2006, no pet.) ("The evidence in this case indicates only that appellant was aware the State was seeking a deadly weapon finding. The trial judge at punishment commented that 'there was a gun’ in the house where the drags were found, but no evidence before us supports the comment.”).

. See Cobb v. State, 851 S.W.2d 871, 874 (Tex.Crim.App.1993) ("The State still must prove the identity of the probationer and that he or she violated the terms of the order of probation.”).

. See Tex.R. Evid. 201.

. See Emenhiser v. State, 196 S.W.3d 915, 923 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2006, pet. filed) ("The trial court took judicial notice of the fact that the trial judge had seen Bailey in the courtroom during testimony.”).

. McCowan v. State, 739 S.W.2d 652, 655 (Tex.App.-Beaumont 1987, pet. ref’d) (citations omitted).