Court Opinion

ID: 9818644
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:00:16.961389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:32:31.439140
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT,
Justice, concurring and dissenting on state’s motion for rehearing.
I agree with the State and the majority that affirming the conviction on count one requires vacating the remainder of the convictions. But because the majority has borrowed the Karenev majority’s overly broad brush to paint its analysis in affirming that conviction,1 I must respectfully dissent.
I adopt the Karenev concurring opinion, written by Judge Cochran and joined by Judges Price, Womack, and Johnson, because it is a clear, concise, and more artfully drafted explanation of why technicalities should not trump the Constitution than I am capable of writing:
There are two good reasons why appellate courts should entertain a facial challenge to the penal statute setting out the offense for which the defendant was convicted, even when it is raised for the first time on appeal:
(1) American law prohibits the conviction and punishment of a person under an unconstitutional penal statute; in other words, it is an “absolute requirement” that a person be criminally pun*427ished only for the violation of a valid penal law; and
(2) Appellate courts are in at least as good a position as trial courts to review the purely legal question of whether a particular penal statute is facially unconstitutional.
First, I do not think that the majority is suggesting that it is quite acceptable to send someone to prison for violating an unconstitutional penal statute if that person failed to object to the statute’s unconstitutionality in the trial court. But its language could well be misconstrued as allowing persons who are not guilty of violating any valid penal statute to be punished nonetheless if they failed to complain soon enough. The moral of that story would be: Because you were a slowpoke at noticing that you were not guilty of any valid criminal offense, we will punish you as if you really were guilty of some valid criminal offense. That is not the American way: every person has an absolute, fundamental, and unforfeitable right to be punished only for the violation of a valid criminal statute.
Second, the general rationale for requiring an objection in the trial court to preserve error on appeal simply does not apply when the claim is that the penal statute is facially unconstitutional and cannot be used to punish any person, now or in the future. The two main reasons for requiring a contemporaneous objection in the trial court are (1) to give the opposing party an opportunity to respond or cure the problem before it becomes error; and (2) to give the trial judge an opportunity to prevent the error from occurring. A third rationale is that “judicial economy requires that issues be raised first in the trial court to spare the parties and the public the expense of a potentially unnecessary appeal.”
The first two rationales do not apply when a penal statute defining the criminal offense is facially unconstitutional in its entirety. The statute cannot be repaired by the parties or the trial judge. The only two options at the trial level are to dismiss the charges or proceed with the prosecution.
The third rationale, conservation of scarce judicial resources, does apply when the prosecutor or judge agrees with the defendant that the penal statute is facially unconstitutional, the charges are dismissed, and there is no appeal from dismissal. But the likelihood of that occurring is minuscule. Trial judges very rarely declare a penal statute unconstitutional; prosecutors would generally be remiss if they failed to appeal a ruling that a legislatively enacted penal statute was unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable; and public policy is best served by a published appellate decision declaring a penal statute facially unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable against any person. Thus, while it is conceivable that requiring a defendant to complain of a penal statute’s facial unconstitutionality in the trial court might save some [scarce] judicial resources, that expense is a very small price to pay when balanced against the bedrock American notion that we do not convict and punish people for unconstitutional crimes. Surely this Court would not, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, uphold a sodomy conviction today even though the defendant had not complained in the trial court about the unconstitutionality of the “still in the books” sodomy statute.2
*428If, as the majority holds in reliance on the five-judge majority in Karenev, a person may be convicted of and sentenced to prison for violating a piece of legislation that is repugnant to the Constitution solely because the trial lawyer failed to make timely objection, we allow the protections of our Constitution to be usurped by procedural technicalities. Is this another issue that cannot be raised on direct appeal but may be raised by writ of habeas corpus? Is this really the way we want to expend the overstretched resources of our judiciary, which although a branch of government equal to the legislative and the executive branches,3 in its entirety is financed by only .373% of the total state budget?4
In our history, we have made slavery legal, and our courts have upheld laws criminalizing miscegenation5 and sodomy.6 Often our communities believed these laws were proper, and lawyers would not object to their constitutionality because the laws were accepted by the community of which the lawyer was a member.
What vehicle for objection does a defendant in a criminal case have for making his objection to a law he believes to be unconstitutional if his lawyer disagrees and refuses to object or simply fails to make the objection? Although the Texas Constitution provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have ... the right of being heard by himself or counsel, or both ...,”7 courts repeatedly deny the accused this right, holding that a defendant is not entitled to “hybrid representation.”8 The defendant himself can make no objection that will preserve any complaint if that defendant is represented by counsel who either does not realize there is a constitutional issue or does not believe that the statute violates constitutional protections.
While I agree that a statute that is unconstitutional only as applied to a defendant requires objection to bring the issue to the attention of the trial court, a statute that is unconstitutional on its face can only be void and no statute at all. Convicting a defendant of violating a void statute would be similar to convicting a person of an offense that does not appear in our penal statutes. Does anyone really believe that it is proper to convict a person of an act that does not appear in our penal statutes merely because there is no objection?
This court is bound by the precedent established by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and the conscientious majority has followed the five-judge majority in Karenev. I would hold, as has been the law for many years, that a law that is facially unconstitutional is void9 and may *429be challenged at trial, on direct appeal, by-writ of habeas corpus, or in any other way, regardless of preservation, especially if the statute has been held to be facially unconstitutional after the filing of the appellate brief but before the opinion is handed down. I agree with the concurring judges in Karenev that
appellate courts should entertain a facial challenge to the penal statute setting out the offense for which the defendant was convicted, even when it is raised for the first time on appeal:
(1) American law prohibits the conviction and punishment of a person under an unconstitutional penal statute; in other words, it is an “absolute requirement” that a person be criminally punished only for the violation of a valid penal law; and
(2) Appellate courts are in at least as good a position as trial courts to review the purely legal question of whether a particular penal statute is facially unconstitutional.10
I would so hold, and because the majority does not, I must respectfully dissent.

. See Karenev v. State, 281 S.W.3d 428, 432-34 (Tex.Crim.App.2009).

. Id. at 436-40 (Cochran, J., concurring) (citations omitted).

. Tex. Const, art. II, § 1.

. Conference Comm., Report (3rd printing), Tex. H.B. 1, 82nd Leg., R.S. (May 26, 2011), available at http://www.lbb.state.tx.us/Bill_82/ 4_Conference/prtHB l_Conference_2011_ SIG_Engross.pdf.

. See, e.g., Frasher v. State, 3 Tex. Ct.App. 263, 276-78 (1877) (upholding former article 386 of our criminal code).

. Lawrence v. State, 41 S.W.3d 349, 357-59, 362 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist] 2001, pet. ref’d), rev'd, 539 U.S. 558, 578-79, 123 S.Ct. 2472, 2483-84, 156 L.Ed.2d 508 (2003).

. Tex. Const, art. I, § 10 (emphasis added).

. See, e.g., Ex parte Bohannan, 350 S.W.3d 116, 116 n.1 (Tex.Crim.App.2011).

. Reynoldsville Casket Co. v. Hyde, 514 U.S. 749, 760, 115 S.Ct. 1745, 1752, 131 L.Ed.2d 820 (1995) (Scalia, J., concurring) ("[A] law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and is as no law.”) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); Ex parte Yarbrough (The Ku Klux Klan Cases), 110 U.S. 651, 654, 4 S.Ct. 152, 153, 28 L.Ed. 274 (1884); Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, 375-377, 25 L.Ed. 717 (1879); Ex pane Weise, 55 S.W.3d 617, 620 (Tex.Crim.App.2001) (stating that a defendant *429is entitled to file for pretrial habeas relief when he alleges "that the statute under which he ... is prosecuted is unconstitutional on its face; consequently, there is no valid statute and the charging instrument is void’’); Rabb v. State, 730 S.W.2d 751, 752 (Tex.Crim.App.1987), abrogated by Karenev, 281 S.W.3d at 434.

. Karenev, 281 S.W.3d at 436-38 (Cochran, J., concurring) (citations omitted).