Court Opinion

ID: 9662784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:18:14.873143+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:42.503017
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, Judge,
concurring.
What makes this case a little more difficult than it would otherwise be is the split personality of King v. State, 473 S.W.2d 43 (Tex.Crim.App.1971), upon which Judge Clinton relies in his dissenting opinion. Almost 25 years ago, this Court established in King that the return of an indictment is not a prerequisite to the exercise of jurisdiction by district courts in felony eases. At issue in that case was a new statute authorizing criminal defendants to waive the constitutional requirement of an indictment and proceed to trial on the basis of an information filed by the district attorney. The. constitutionality of this statute plainly depended upon whether an indictment was indispensable to the trial court’s jurisdiction, since the requisites of a court’s jurisdiction can never be waived. Ultimately, this Court concluded that the return of an indictment is not jurisdictional, but merely a right of defendants to be accused by a grand jury rather than by the district attorney. Since King it has been the law that felony defendants may waive their right to an indictment and elect to be accused by information.
In the final paragraphs of its opinion the Court cautioned, however, that when an indictment has been waived by the defendant “a felony information acts in lieu of or as a substitute for an indictment and its validity is therefore essential to the court’s jurisdiction.” King, 473 S.W.2d at 52. The most intelligent way to understand this statement is, I think, to take it as an admonition that the pleading requisites of a felony information are as rigorous as those of an indictment. In other words, the information must still charge a person with the commission of a criminal offense and meet other substantive pleading requirements applicable to the instrument it replaces, all of which were considered essential to the court’s jurisdiction at that time. Only the defendant’s personal right to a screening by the grand jury could be waived under the statute.
The Court in King also concluded with the further admonition, which Judge Clinton cites in his dissenting opinion, that “[i]f an accused has not effectively waived his right to an indictment in full accordance with the statute the felony information is void.” King, 473 S.W.2d at 52. This remark is a little startling because it is odd to speak of a court’s jurisdiction as depending upon the effective waiver by a defendant of his personal rights. Certainly it is an error to proceed with a felony trial on the basis of an information if the defendant has not waived his right to be indicted by a grand jury. Moreover, this right is clearly of such importance that it must be expressly waived and cannot be lost by default. I would even hold, therefore, that failure of the trial court to honor it is a defect that may be raised for the first time on appeal. But void? The Court in King said so and Judge Clinton is willing to go along, but I think the comment must have been a mistake.
In the first place, failure to follow statutory procedures for the waiver of an indictment in felony cases is not numbered among the objectionable defects, either formal or substantive, of an information itself. But even if it were numbered among such defects, failure to complain of it before trial would constitute *488a forfeiture of the right to complain of it on appeal or in any other posteonviction proceeding under contemporary law. Tex.Code Crim.Proc. art. 1.14(b). Only if, on account of the defect, it could be said that the charging instrument was not an information at all would it be plausible to argue under our present jurisprudence that the defect was actually jurisdictional. Cook v. State, 902 S.W.2d 471 (Tex.Crim.App.1995).
Our Constitution defines an information as “[a] written instrument presented to a court by an attorney for the State charging a person with the commission of an offense.” Tex. Const, art. V, Sec. 12(b). No one claims that the instrument here in question did not meet this definition. Judge Clinton comes closest when he argues that “[a] void information is the same as no information at all.” Dissenting Opinion of Clinton, J., at p. 489 (internal quotation marks omitted). But, of course, it is not exactly the same. While it is true that a void information is no more effective to confer jurisdiction than is no information at all, saying so only begs the question of what is actually necessary in an information under today’s law to confer jurisdiction. And the answer to that question, as we know, is a good deal different now than it was when King was written. Suffice it to say that, because the instrument here in question met the constitutional definition of an information and because there are no longer any defects of an information which are jurisdictional, it follows that the instrument here in question cannot be regarded as void on the ground that it was not an information or upon the ground that it was a defective information. Accordingly, I cannot agree with Judge Clinton’s contrary conclusion.
Moreover, even if we accept the dubious proposition currently supported by our precedents that judgments of conviction may be collaterally attacked, not only on the basis of claims that the convicting court lacked jurisdiction of the case, but also on the ground that the defendant was deprived of some fundamental or constitutional right during the proceeding, there is no claim of any such deprivation in the instant cause. Applicant contends only that statutory procedures for the waiver of indictment were not scrupulously observed. Accordingly, he is not entitled to relief unless failure to follow such procedures somehow divested the trial court of jurisdiction. In spite of King’s rather loose language supporting this proposition, advanced without any citation of controlling authority or persuasive argument whatsoever, I simply cannot accept as law the bare assertion that mere disobedience of an elective procedural statute is fatal to the subject-matter jurisdiction of a court. To the extent that King can be read to support such a proposition, I would disapprove it.
Accordingly, I would join the majority opinion in this case but for its failure to acknowledge that King is authority for a contrary result. I agree with Judge Clinton that, without overruling King, “we are constrained to hold that in the absence of a written waiver or waiver in open court, the trial court lacked jurisdiction to proceed to conviction.” Dissenting Opinion of Clinton, J., at p. 489. But, unlike Judge Clinton, I cannot accept King ⅛ bare assertion of voidness, especially in light of our contemporary jurisprudence. I would, therefore, expressly overrule that part of King which purports to hold that a district court lacks jurisdiction of an offense charged by felony information unless the defendant has waived his right to an indictment in the exact manner prescribed by statute. Upon this rationale, I concur here only in the Court’s result.