Court Opinion

ID: 9673581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:14:50.723837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:22.917557
License: Public Domain

*435CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
Once again a majority of the Court shatters a part of a monumental legislative enactment by substituting “should” for “shall.”1 Recently Dinnery v. State, 592 S.W.2d 343, 349 (Tex.Cr.App.1979, 1980, Opinion on Rehearing on Court’s Own Motion) 2 and Craven v. State, 607 S.W.2d 527 (Tex.Cr.App.1980) interred Article 1.15, V.A.C.C.P. Today Article 1.13 is done in.
In finding the genesis and purpose of the 1931 amendatory act,3 the majority is essentially correct. Yet, that act of the Legislative Department marked such radical turn in the prior unswerving historical course of public insistence on the right of trial by jury in criminal cases 4 that it immediately came under heavy attack in the courts. It was soon saved by the Judicial Department through a steady barrage of the waiver doctrine:5 McMillan v. State, 122 Tex.Cr.R. 583, 57 S.W.2d 125 (1933); Hardin v. State, 57 S.W.2d 127 (Tex.Cr.App.1933); Bolton v. State, 123 Tex.Cr.R. 543, 59 S.W.2d 833 (1933); Dabney v. State, 124 Tex.Cr.R. 21, 60 S.W.2d 451 (1933). The irony is that before long protective portions of the same act were being assaulted by its erstwhile defender, and curiously enough the majority opinion is a litany of the blows struck in the favor of “practice” over procedure, ritualism for right, ridicule in lieu of requisite.
Fifty one years later, what remains of the 1931 act is honored more in its breach— “the good is oft interred with their bones.” And my lament is not so much that the Court is “legislating” the demise of the act as it is that the majority pretends it still has enough vitality such that “[e]very effort should be made” to comply with it, Opinion for the Court, n. 2. This kind of precatory admonition shames the certitude usually insisted of the rule of law. In my judgment to sanction “substantial compliance” is to provide succor to expediency, and thereby denigrate one of the legislatively expressed purposes of our code of criminal procedure, i.e., “to make the rules of procedure ... intelligible to the officers who are to act under them, and to all persons whose rights are to be affected by them,” Article 1.03, V.A.C.C.P., to the end that — Must it be added? — the rules are honored in implementation of the constitutional promises of due process and due course of law.
However, on a more pragmatic note— and, given the spotty “substantial compliance” in the past of this very case, we *436surely must be as practical as reasonably permitted by law — because in more recent times the Court has rendered directory rather than mandatory the provisions of Articles 1.13 and 1.15 and other articles in the Code of Criminal Procedure that dovetail with them, I would hold complaints about failure to comply with them by an accused who entered his plea after proper admonishment are not cognizable by post-conviction writ of habeas corpus for, even if factually supported, they will not make restraint under the judgment of conviction illegal.6 In this way we are relieved of the embarrassment of saying the law is not really what it was so clearly intended to be.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment of the Court.

. All emphasis is mine unless otherwise indicated.

. How a development came about sometimes tells much more than its substance.

. Acts 1931, 42nd Leg., p. 65, ch. 43 contained eight sections, the first seven of which made several changes in provisions of the criminal procedural codes that date from the first one adopted in 1856, amended in 1858 and collected in Oldham & White, Digest Laws of Texas, published in 1859 by legislative authority. Together they were designed, as the Section 8 emergency clause states, “to reduce the expense of law enforcement and to hasten the disposition of felony cases wherein pleas of guilty are entered” — most salutary objectives which most of us in the criminal justice system still strive to achieve.

. See generally, Thornton v. State, 601 S.W.2d 340, 345-346 (Tex.Cr.App.1979, 1980, Opinion on Motions for Rehearing).

. Though certainly not the first time, Moore v. State, 22 Tex.Cr.R. 117, 2 S.W. 634 (1886) is a typical early application of the doctrine in this State to the trial of a miscreant who pleaded guilty to the charged misdemeanor, waived trial by jury and asked the court to assess punishment; but since the State objected the court impressed a jury trial on the accused. The resultant conviction in Travis Court was reversed with an opinion by White, P. J.:
“Because the court deprived the defendant of his right to have his case tried, upon his plea of guilty, by the court, without a jury, the judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded.”
Nowadays, of course, it is held that an accused is not constitutionally entitled to have his guilty plea accepted. North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 91 S.Ct. 160, 27 L.Ed.2d 162 (1970).

. “The writ does not reach such errors or irregularities as would render a judgment voidable only, but only such illegalities as render it void; that is, radical defect; that which is contrary to the principles of law, as distinguished from mere rules of procedure; that which constitutes a complete defect in the proceedings, and not a mere irregularity in the proceedings. If the judgment is void the writ may be resorted to. [citing a host of cases],” 1 Vernon’s Constitution of Texas 318, Article I, § 12, n. 11.