Court Opinion

ID: 9648368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:16:24.838426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:59.234623
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I respectfully dissent to the overruling of Boone v. State, 450 S.W.2d 614 (1970); and Melancon v. State, 367 S.W.2d 690 (1963), but concur in the result reached.
To achieve the result reached in this cause, I do not feel it is necessary to overrule the above cases or to set forth a new rule of law that appears to praise poor pleadings and to recommend conflicting, contradictory and at variance type pleadings to become the norm. See infra.
Presiding Judge Onion said in Plessinger v. State, 536 S.W.2d 380 (1976): “The object of the doctrine of variance between the allegations of an indictment is to avoid surprise ... and for such variance to be material it must be such as to mislead the party to his prejudice.”
The reason I concur in the result is I find nothing that would surprise one by the allegation of the word “indictment,” whereas the proof showed the word “indictment” should have been “information.” By the remaining allegations, I find the appellant was given sufficient notice of what the State intended to prove by way of the enhancement allegation. He was told the date of conviction, the cause number of the conviction, the court in which the conviction occurred, the location of that court, the offense for which appellant was convicted in the foreign jurisdiction, and the fact it was a felony offense. Likewise, in Ples-singer, supra, the defendant was told the *160date of conviction, the offense for which he was convicted, the court in which the conviction occurred, the location of that court, the cause number of the conviction, and the fact it was a felony offense. In Corley v. State, 254 S.W.2d 394 (1953), which was overruled in Plessinger, supra, the defendant was put on notice of the prior conviction by the State alleging the wrong court but the right county of the prior conviction, the date of the conviction, the cause number of that conviction, the offense, and the fact it was a felony offense. I think this Court was correct in overruling Corley, supra, because the defendant was, in my view, given sufficient notice of the prior conviction, as was the appellant in this cause.
Judge Dally is absolutely correct when he says: “It appears that in alleging prior convictions for enhancement of punishment the trend is toward a relaxation of the former rigid rules.” Soon, I fear, we will permit the “relaxation” to become a rule of law. This holding, in my view, attempts to take one giant step to achieve the “rule of relaxation,” by unnecessarily overruling cases of this Court.
We should not condone carelessness; we should chastize and criticize it, especially when it comes to drafting indictments, in-formations, and enhancement allegations contained therein.
Because there is no need to overrule Me-lancon, supra, and Boone, supra, I respectfully dissent to that part of the opinion. However, I agree with the result reached and, therefore, concur in the result.