Court Opinion

ID: 9778047
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:31:03.144284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:03.386076
License: Public Domain

CANTU, Justice,
concurring.
I write only to shed more light on what appears to be confusion in an area of the law not uncommonly visited by confusion.
I believe that the real problem before us is one of semantics. However, when everything has been said and done, I think it is clear that appellant correctly points out that the provisions of the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, TEX.CODE CRIM.PROC. ANN. art. 51.13 (Vernon 1979) were never complied with as was the intent of the drafters.
Moreover, if appellant never availed himself of the opportunity to appeal because he never applied for a writ of habeas corpus, then it is apparent from my reading of the record that he did so (failed to apply for a writ) because the Court failed to comply with the requirement that appellant be informed of “the demand made for his surrender and of the crime with which he is charged.” It is only after this provision of the Act has been complied with that a duty falls upon appellant to make known his “desire to test the legality of his arrest.” Only after appellant has made an informed request for such a hearing is the trial court required to afford appellant a reasonable but fixed time within which to prepare and file his application for writ of habeas corpus to test the very allegations and demand by the demanding State of which he has been statutorily informed.
The majority opinion concludes that there is no assertion that he did not receive “a complete set” of the demanding instruments as required by section 3 of the Act. While arriving at this conclusion, the majority recognizes that appellant’s specific complaint is that he was never informed by a Texas Judge of a court of record of the demand for his surrender and of the nature of the crime with which he has been charged. I see no problem with reading this complaint as encompassing a claim that he has never been afforded the benefits of Section 10 and that the complaint includes a failure to comply by handing him a copy of the “complete set” of the demanding instruments.
If compliance has never been had what does it matter that compliance was never had in a particular manner either? In either case the result remains the same. Appellant is never given a meaningful opportunity to decide whether a contest is in order or not.
Moreover, I find it offensive that the majority characterizes the hearing on October 8, 1987, upholding the extradition as cutting off appellant’s right to contest the demand. If one can be deprived of his right to demand to know the nature of the foreign accusation by the expediency of a “hearing” given sua sponte by the trial court and then bind the appellant to the findings because he has not challenged them then there is no reason to pretend that the Act is on the books and that it means what it says. If there is no application for writ of habeas corpus as the majority states, it is because the time to file one never ripened. This being the case, the disposition made by the majority may be correct because an appeal cannot follow from the denial of relief on an application *181that was never filed. Perhaps appellant’s remedy lies elsewhere.
It seems to me that the complaint appellant voices above all others is that he cannot get the trial court to comply with step one so that he can move on to step two as the burden shifts to him. His remedy, in my opinion, lies in mandamus to compel compliance with the Act. Such is not before us. Nor can it come before us through the expediency of an appeal because the Court of Criminal Appeals has held that the only review available under the Act is by appeal from denial of relief upon an application for writ of habeas corpus. See Ex parte Chapman, 601 S.W.2d 380, 382-383 (Tex.Crim.App.1980).
This being so, whatever is before us is not an appeal, at least not from denial of habeas corpus. I must, therefore, concur that the thing to do is to dismiss the “attempted appeal.”