Court Opinion

ID: 9760744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:11:46.557844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:16.660849
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring on Appellant’s Petition for Discretionary Review.
For the reasons stated in Judge Meyers’ dissenting opinion, I concur in the Court’s judgment in this cause. I agree with Judge Meyers that the majority’s disposition is in all things inconsistent with the rationale and holding of Studer v. State, 799 S.W.2d 263 (Tex.Cr.App.1990), for precisely the reasons he gives in his dissent. I also agree with him that Studer was wrongly decided. Id., at 286-293 (Clinton, J., concurring). Moreover, something very similar to the approach Judge Maloney now advances in his concurring opinion, derived from his opinion for the Court in Fisher v. State, 887 S.W.2d 49 (Tex.Cr.App.1994), was suggested at the time of Studer, but rejected. Id., at 293. I can only conclude that the majority’s disposition today is fundamentally at odds with Studer.
Unlike Judge Meyers, I have no compunction about overruling Studer, stare decisis notwithstanding. As I observed in a companion ease to Studer, Rodriguez v. State, 799 S.W.2d 301 (Tex.Cr.App.1990):
“In attempting to pluck what it perceives to be the stray thread of fundamentally defective indictments from the criminal jurisprudence, the majority threatens to unravel the whole fabric of our criminal procedure.”
*481Id., at 304 (Clinton, J., dissenting). See Studer v. State, supra, at 292 (Clinton, J., concurring). At the risk of mixing metaphors, I would nip that threat as close to the bud as possible, and admit that we are overruling Studer. Because, as Judge Meyers ably illustrates, the Court all but does so, I concur in its judgment. In failing expressly to overrule Studer, however, the Court is intellectually dishonest, and for that reason I cannot join its opinion.