Court Opinion

ID: 9647575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:41:19.731084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:50.852043
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
None of us may claim a monopoly on the technique of outlining a “worst case” scenario to continue protesting an earlier significant decision of this Court. Within a month after being delivered Adams v. State, 707 S.W.2d 900 (Tex.Cr.App.1986), was subjected to revisionist efforts in Op-dahl v. State, 705 S.W.2d 697 (Tex.Cr.App.1986). Still not yet a year in the books, Adams is again rescripted, along with Op-dahl, by Presiding Judge Onion in his dissenting opinion in this cause, viz:
“And to make matters worse, Adams cannot be applied on appeal without a statement of facts. In such a case the former rule applies. The conviction is reversed if the trial court has erred in *110overruling the motion to quash based on the lack of adequate notice. Opdahl v. State, 705 S.W.2d 697 (Tex.Cr.App.1986).”
Dissenting Opinion, p. 111.1 That scenario is truly a “worst case.”
First, for reasons given in my concurring opinion, the writer of Adams agreed with me that neither Craven v. State, 613 S.W.2d 488 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), nor Adams mandates that the record include “a statement of facts at trial.” Opdahl, supra, at 699-700. Second, though the “first question” in Adams is “whether the charging instrument failed to convey some requisite item of ‘notice’,” writing its own “worst case” the majority in Opdahl mistakenly insisted, “If there is no statement of facts, then it is unnecessary to answer the first question.” Opdahl, at 699. Moreover, the majority opined, for an appellate court to answer the first question, but not be able to answer the second and third questions [for want of a statement of a facts] would result in a mere perfunctory analysis.” Ibid. Thus professing that it was unable to determine what effect overruling the motion to quash might have had on preparation for trial or defense at trial, the Op-dahl majority reversed the judgment of the court of appeals (which had reversed the judgment of conviction for erroneously overruling the motion to quash) and AFFIRMED the judgment of the trial court.
Therefore, for all its other infirmities, Opdahl certainly did not suggest for a moment, as the dissent here would have it, “In such a case the former rule applies [and] [t]he conviction is reversed if the trial court erred in overruling the motion to quash ...” Similarly unfounded is its brief scenario in note 1, dissenting Opinion, p. 111.

. All emphasis is mine throughout unless otherwise indicated.