Court Opinion

ID: 9777685
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:19:47.079098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:59.303265
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, Judge,
dissent to denial of appellee’s motion for rehearing.
The majority’s opinion on original submission rests in large part on its resolution of an issue not discussed by the appellate court below, not raised or argued by the parties in their briefs before that court or before this Court, and not presented as a ground upon which review was granted by this Court. Appellee requests rehearing so that he may have the opportunity to brief and argue the issue. Before rendering a decision on an issue of consequence, this Court ought at least allow the parties an opportunity to present their most persuasive arguments and authority in support of their respective positions on the issue. Cf Whatley v. State, 946 S.W.2d 73, 76 fn. 6 (Tex.Crim.App.l997)(de-clining to address issue not raised in brief before Court of Appeals and not urged in petition for discretionary review before this Court); Theus v. State, 863 S.W.2d 489, 491 (Tex.Crim.App.l993)(on remand by Court of Criminal Appeals to Court of Appeals for harm analysis, Court of Appeals is required to afford defendant opportunity to file brief on new issue). It seems the message to be taken from the Court’s action in this case is that there is no longer any real reason for parties to present briefs and argue before this Court. Perhaps adversarial representation is no longer an important feature of our system. See Ex parte McJunkins, 954 S.W.2d 39 (Tex.Crim.App.l997)(majority of Court withdrew mandate and granted State’s motion for rehearing in order to address question not raised by State in its motion for rehearing). In the belief that adversarial process remains, or ought to remain, an indispensable feature, I dissent to the majority’s denial of rehearing.
On original submission the majority said:
The first question we address is whether the parties in the administrative proceeding and the criminal prosecution are the same. The party that sought to revoke appellee’s driver’s licence in the administrative proceeding was the Texas Department of Public Safety. See Article 6701Z-5, Section 2(f). The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Dallas County District Attorney are not the same parties. Therefore, collateral estoppel principles do not preclude the Dallas County District Attorney from litigating the issue of probable cause for appellee’s arrest at the suppression hearing in the criminal prosecution.
State v. Brabson, 976 S.W.2d 182, 184 (emphasis added).1 The majority provided no authority for its conclusion that the Dallas County District Attorney and the Department of Public Safety are “parties,” let alone “not the same parties.”2 The record provides some clue.
The information in the criminal prosecution reads “In the Name and by the Authority of the State of Texas now comes the Criminal District Attorney of Dallas County, State of Texas.” The criminal case is styled, “The State of Texas vs William Brabson.” The State’s Announcement of Ready for Trial reads “Now comes the State of Texas in the above styled and numbered cause.... ” The trial transcript reads “Wilham Harold Brab-son II vs The State of Texas.” The State’s Notice of Appeal reads “The State of Texas comes before the Court and gives the Court notice of its desire and intent to appeal the Court’s order ... The State will prosecute this appeal ...” The State’s Designation of Record on Appeals reads “The State of Texas files this Designation_” The State’s Designation requests, among other items, “The information filed by the State of Texas.” Other filings in the trial court are styled *204“The State of Texas v. William Brabson III.” The State’s Brief before the Court of Appeals reflects the style of the case as, “The State of Texas vs William Harold Brabson, III”, and begins, “The State of Texas comes before the Court and flies this brief in support of its appeal ...” The State’s Brief on Petition for Discretionary Review before this Court has a page entitled “List of Parties” showing the following:
1. State of Texas, represented by Dallas County Assistant Criminal District Attorneys Michael J. Sandlin, Kirk Lechtenbur-ger, and Scott Bryant.
2. Defendant William Harold Brabson, III, represented by J. Stephen Cooper.
The body of the Brief begins, “Comes now the State of Texas, Appellant, through the Criminal District Attorney, and files its Brief....”
The Original Petition in the administrative proceeding, while styled “Texas Department of Public Safety vs. William Harold Brabson III,” reads further “Now comes the State of Texas, acting by and through James R. Wilson, Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Plaintiff, and flies this its first original petition....” The administrative judge’s Findings of Fact are styled “The State of Texas v. William Harold Brabson III.”
The Court of Appeals’ opinion begins “The State appeals the county criminal court’s granting Brabson’s motion_” That Court further wrote, “The State instituted criminal proceeding [sic] against Brabson-” Nowhere does the Court of Appeals’ opinion mention the District Attorney.
The record is saturated with evidence that the State of Texas is the real party here. The majority did not address the record evidence. The majority’s holding that the Dallas County District Attorney is a “party” to this criminal prosecution, rather than the State of Texas, was viewed as so beyond the pale by one judge on a court of appeals that he could not restrain his expression of alarm at the holding and his refusal to follow it:
The final basis for the Brabson opinion concerns me the most. It is that collateral estoppel does not apply because the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Dallas County District Attorney are not “the same parties.” I believe they are not parties at all. They are different parts of the executive branch of the State of Texas. The Brabson opinion states that an underlying principle of collateral estoppel is that “a party should have an opportunity to litigate an issue of ultimate fact” and “the Dallas County District Attorney had no opportunity to litigate the issue of probable cause for appellee’s arrest in the administrative proceeding....” The Dallas County District Attorney did not have that opportunity. The Dallas County District Attorney is simply that, a lawyer. His client, the State of Texas, was the party, and it had notice and motive to aggressively prosecute the issue of ultimate fact in the license revocation proceeding, just as it might do by and through its lawyer, the Dallas County District Attorney, in the DWI case_ [The majority’s holding in Brabson ] is, in my opinion, at least questionable under Waller v. Florida.
Reynolds v. State, 967 S.W.2d 493, 497 (Tex. App. — Houston [1st Dist.] 1998)(Cohen, J., dissenting).
Of course Justice Cohen is exactly right.3 The Dallas County District Attorney and the Department of Public Safety are not “parties” in the two proceedings. The State of Texas is the party.4
*205Although the majority does not cite any authority for its holding that the State is not the party here, other courts have addressed this issue.5 In Zapata v. Department of Motor Vehicles, 2 Cal.App.4th 108, 2 Cal. Rptr.2d 855 (4th Div.1991), the court addressed virtually the same question asked by the majority in this case: was the prosecuting attorney in the criminal prosecution and the motor vehicle entity in the revocation proceedings the “same party” for purposes of collateral estoppel? The California court concluded “the State of California is the real party in interest in both proceedings.” Id. 2 Cal.Rptr.2d at 858. The court emphasized that “both agencies represent the state, both have the same interest of protecting the public from those who drive under the influence, and both initiate proceedings in an effort to *206obtain sanctions to deter such conduct.” Id. at 859.
Some final questions come to mind in light of the majority’s holding on original submission. Since the individual District Attorney, rather than the State of Texas, is now the recognized party to a criminal proceeding, how does this impact federal writs of habeas corpus in which the State of Texas is represented by the Texas Attorney General? Pursuant to the majority’s holding on original submission, the Attorney General would be a different “party” to the action than the District Attorney. Thus, will the Attorney General now be compelled to obtain new findings on which to rely in federal court, since it is a different party than the District Attorney? And what of the jeopardy implications as to a second prosecution for the same criminal activity by a second District Attorney? Given that the District Attorney is a “party” to a criminal proceeding, it is conceivable that two district attorneys from different counties could both prosecute for one criminal transaction that crossed jurisdictional lines, in two separate actions. See tex. Code crim. PROC. art. 13.08 (where property stolen in one county and taken by offender to another, offender may be prosecuted in either county or in county where security agreement filed); cf Jones v. State, 945 S.W.2d 852 (Tex.App.— Waco 1997)(addressing venue in multiple counties under article 13.08 or general venue provision in article 13.18), pet. granted.
This Court ought to withdraw its opinion on original submission, grant rehearing, and order briefing and argument on the question of “parties.”6 I dissent to the denial of rehearing.

. All emphasis throughout this opinion is added, unless otherwise indicated.

. It would seem that a party to a criminal proceeding ought to know when it is in fact a party. But apparently the Dallas County District Attorney did not realize he was a party to the instant criminal proceeding, as he did not object on that basis to appellee’s efforts to assert collateral es-toppel, and he did not raise such issue before the Court of Appeals or before this Court.

. On original submission, the majority pointed to the current statute's provision "that the determination of the administrative judge ‘ does not preclude litigation of the same or similar facts in a criminal prosecution.' ” Brabson, 976 S.W.2d at 185 n. 6. Aside from the fact that this statute is probably unconstitutional, Reynolds, 967 S.W.2d at 496-97 (Cohen, J., dissenting), the provision stands to illustrate the legislature’s failure to assume the position that the district attorney and the department of public safety are different parties. If the legislature viewed the two entities as constituting different parties, there would be no need to address any collateral estoppel implications.

. In Waller v. Florida, 397 U.S. 387, 90 S.Ct. 1184, 25 L.Ed.2d 435 (1970), cited by Justice Cohen above, the petitioner was charged by the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, for violating a city ordinance. He was found guilty and sentenced in municipal court. The State of Florida later brought a criminal prosecution, based on the same conduct that gave rise to the action by the *205city. The petitioner alleged double jeopardy barred the State’s action. The state court rejected the petitioner’s claim, holding that he could be tried in municipal court and again in state court for the same conduct. The Supreme Court granted cert to address "the asserted power of the two courts within one State to place petitioner on trial for the same alleged crime." Id. at 390, 90 S.Ct. 1184. The State argued that the municipality and the state should be regarded as separate sovereigns. The Supreme Court disagreed:
"Political subdivisions of States — counties, cities, or whatever — never were and never have been considered as sovereign entities. Rather, they have been traditionally regarded as subordinate governmental instrumentalities created by the State to assist in the carrying out of state governmental functions." ... [Certain] provisions of the Florida Constitution demonstrate that the judicial power to try petitioner on the first charges in municipal court springs from the same organic law that created the state court of general jurisdiction in which petitioner was tried and convicted for a felony. Accordingly, the apt analogy to the relationship between municipal and state governments is to be found in the relationship between the government of a Territory and the Government of the Unites States. The legal consequence of that relationship was settled in Grafton v. United States ..., where this Court held that a prosecution in a court of the United States is a bar to a subsequent prosecution in a territorial court, since both are arms of the same sovereign.
Id. at 392-94, 90 S.Ct. 1184 (quoting in part Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964)). The Court distinguished the relationship between a territory and the federal government from the relationship between a state and the federal government:
"The government of a state does not derive its powers from the United States, while the Government of the Philippines owes its existence wholly to the United States, and its judicial tribunals exert their powers by authority of the United States.... So that the cases holding that the same acts committed in a state of the Union may constitute an offense against the United States and also a distinct offense against the state, do not apply here, where the two tribunals that tried the accused exert all their powers under and by authority of the same government — that of the United States."
Id. at 394, 90 S.Ct. 1184 (quoting Grafton v. United States, 206 U.S. 333, 27 S.Ct. 749, 51 L.Ed. 1084 (1907)). Likewise, the District Attorney and the Department of Public Safety “exert all their powers under and by the authority of the same government — that of the [State of Texas].” Both are "subordinate governmental instrumen-talities created by the State to assist in the carrying out of state governmental functions.” Id.

. Some courts appear consistent with the view expressed in this opinion. United States v. ITT Rayonier, 627 F.2d 996 (9th Cir.l980)(relationship between federal Environmental Protection Agency and State of Washington Department of Ecology was sufficiently close that EPA was collaterally estopped from litigating issue in federal enforcement action that had already been decided in state enforcement action); United States ex rel. DiGiangiemo v. Regan, 528 F.2d 1262 (2nd Cir.l975)(recognizing that doctrine of collateral estoppel applicable in state criminal prosecution to bar evidence suppressed in another state prosecution, but holding doctrine not applicable in this case because defendant failed to move for suppression in second proceeding); United States v. Evans, 655 F.Supp. 243 (E.D.La.l987)(holding government collaterally estopped from re-litigating admissibility of evidence previously decided by another federal court in case which government chose to dismiss). Others have held to the contrary. See State v. Rotter, 958 S.W.2d 59, 64 (Mo.App. W.D.1997)(holding, for collateral estop-pel purposes, no relationship exists between determination of fact in criminal case and determination of fact in administrative proceeding); State v. Stearns, 159 Vt. 266, 617 A.2d 140 (1992)(nature of civil suspension proceeding is such that State does not have full and fair opportunity to litigate); State v. Ratliff, 304 Or. 254, 744 P.2d 247 (1987)(no basis for application of collateral estoppel where suspension proceedings were expedited and informal in contrast to criminal proceedings). The lack of consistency among the jurisdictions is all the more reason for the majority to entertain briefing and argument on this issue. It is unfathomable that the highest state appellate court for criminal cases would decide an issue on which there is conflicting authority, without calling for briefing and argument, and without citing any authority to support its holding.

. I continue to maintain, as I-did on original submission, that the majority's opinion on original submission was wrong to address such issue at all, as it went far beyond the issue on which we granted review and addressed issues not raised before or addressed by the Court of Appeals. Doing so was beyond the scope of our review. But if the Court is going to write on a ■ controversial legal issue not addressed by the court below or in the petition and briefs before this Court, it ought to call for briefing and argument by the parties.