Court Opinion

ID: 9772303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:14:03.593773+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:43.375230
License: Public Domain

OVERSTREET, Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent to the majority’s overruling of long-standing precedent requiring the State to prove, as part of its burden of proof, that the prosecution is not limitations-barred, even if the defendant does not raise the issue. I see no reason to overturn such well-established precedent. The majority suggests that it is not bound to follow such law because it is unworkable or badly reasoned. Proctor and Lemell v. State, 967 S.W.2d 840, 844-45 (Tex.Cr.App.1998). However, it appears to me that the majority’s newly-inspired analysis is what is poorly reasoned, and such will obviously be very workable for the State since it is relieved of its burden of *846proving the statutory limitations requirements in the absence of objection. Of course why would a party object to the failure to prove something that the opposing party is required to prove?
My greater concern is the majority’s changing of the rules midstream on appeal, i.e. suddenly no longer requiring the State to prove that the prosecution was not limitations barred unless appellants objected at trial, when unquestionably there was no such requirement of a defense objection when the case was tried. The majority concludes that such a midstream change in the law is not a violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause of the United States Constitution, because such does not deprive appellants of fair warning of what conduct will give rise to particular criminal penalties, nor does it retroactively alter the definition of aggravated robbery as it existed in 1982, its range of punishment, or the substantive defenses that were available with respect to it. Id., at 844-845. Yet the majority acknowledges that limitations is indeed a defense; and altering whether and when such defense must be raised to be enforced certainly alters its substantive utility.
I am even more troubled by the majority’s statement that “[ajppellants make no other constitutional or policy arguments regarding retroactivity,” and therefore it will consider no others. Id., at 845. Appellants’ joint brief cites Rubino v. Lynaugh, 845 F.2d 1266 (5th Cir.1988) for the proposition that “the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S Constitution protect defendants from judicial actions that would contravene the ex post facto clause.” (Appellants’ joint brief, p. 9). Rubino, supra, at 1271, noting that the United States Constitution’s prohibition against ex post facto laws applied directly only to legislative action, acknowledged that the due process clause protects defendants against action by the judiciary that would contravene the ex post facto clause if done by the legislature. Rubino also explicitly recognized that the purposes behind the prohibition on ex post facto laws are to restrain legislatures and courts from arbitrary and vindictive action, and to prevent prosecution and punishment without fair warning. Id., at 1272.
What could be more arbitrary and vindictive than what this Court now does in overruling years of precedent requiring the State to prove that the prosecution is limitations barred even in the absence of a defense objection thereto, and applying it retroactively to appellants? And such a post-trial change in the law certainly deprives appellants of their statutory limitations defense without fair warning, or any warning. How could appellants have been warned, fairly or otherwise, at the time of trial that this Court would years later overturn decades of law that did not require them to object? If the Texas Legislature made such a change years after trial, unquestionably ex post facto prohibitions would preclude applying the change to appellants. But this Court chooses to ignore the fact that appellants have indeed raised the claims discussed by Rubino and refuses to address them.
Because the majority chooses to apply newfangled caselaw to appellants’ cases that were tried years ago, and employ some sort of tunnel vision in interpreting the claims made in appellants’ brief, I respectfully dissent.