Court Opinion

ID: 9674793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:35:30.689498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:29.688995
License: Public Domain

WHITHAM, Justice,
concurring.
I concur. I join wholeheartedly in the court’s opinion except the holding “that adequate statutory authority exists for a trial judge in a misdemeanor case to order community service as a term and condition of probation_” I am compelled, however, to join in that holding because of the decisions of the Court of Criminal Appeals in Chacon v. State, 558 S.W.2d 874, 875 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Hernandez v. State, 556 S.W.2d 337, 342 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Tamez v. State, 534 S.W.2d 686, 691 (Tex.Cr.App.1976), cited in the majority’s opinion. Those cases stand as authority for the proposition that a trial court, in imposing probationary conditions in a felony case where probation has been granted by the court, is not limited to the probationary conditions set forth in TEX.CODE CRIM.PROC.ANN. art. 42.13, § 6 (Vernon Supp.1982-1983), so long as the condition imposed is a reasonable one. Thus, the holding of those cases is applicable to the present case, although a misdemeanor case, due to the similarities found in Article 42.12, § 6, applicable to felonies and TEX.CODE CRIM.PROC.ANN. art. 42.13, § 6 .(Vernon Supp. 1982-1983), applicable to misdemeanors.
In my view, however, the TEX. CONST. art. II, § 1 and art. Ill, § 1, prohibit delegating to the judiciary the legislative function of providing terms and conditions of probation. Under these constitutional provisions, the legislature is invested with the law-making power of the people and may define crimes and prescribe penalties. State ex rel. Smith v. Blackwell, 500 *299S.W.2d 97, 104 (Tex.Cr.App.1973). To my mind, it follows that the legislature is invested also with the lawmaking power of the people to provide the terms and conditions upon which a person convicted of a crime defined by the legislature may escape the penalty prescribed by the legislature for that crime.
There are valid reasons why the judiciary should not be permitted to usurp this legislative function. As dissatisfaction with various aspects of the criminal justice system grows, there will be a tendency on the part of judicially activist trial judges to devise “innovative” terms and conditions of probation.1 These “innovative” terms and conditions may well become the punishment imposed for the crime; subject to the requirement that it be reasonable. Thus, trial judges become legislators. For judges to do so violates the constitution. In my view, terms and conditions of probation are matters which the constitution requires be provided for through the process of debate and enactment in legislative chambers; not by illusory legalistic arguments in courthouses over whether judicially created terms and conditions of probation are “reasonable.”
I do not find work faithfully at a community service task” to be among the fourteen conditions of probation that the legislature has provided in TEX.CODE CRIM. PROC.ANN. art. 42.13, § 6. Accordingly, were I not bound by decisions of the Court of Criminal Appeals, I would hold that in the present case the trial court had no authority to order community service as a term and condition of probation.

. The Dallas Morning News, January 26, 1984, at 3A, col. 1, reports that a twenty year old mother convicted of murder and child abuse of her son was forbidden by a Florida judge to bear children for fifteen years as a condition of probation. The headline reads "woman jailed for giving birth.”