Court Opinion

ID: 9673793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:18:35.189785+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:23.998712
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION
McDONALD, Presiding Judge.
The re-sentencing proceedings were instituted after the effective date of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1965, the provisions of which are therefore applicable to those proceedings. Article 1.02, V.A.C.C.P.
Article 42.06, V.A.C.C.P. provides:
“If there is a failure from any cause whatever to enter judgment and pronounce sentence, the judgment may be entered and sentence pronounced at any subsequent time, unless a new trial has been granted, or the judgment arrested, or an appeal has been taken. Any time served or punishment suffered from the time the judgment and sentence should have been entered and pronounced and until finally entered shall be credited upon the sentence finally pronounced.”
The allowance of credit, under Article 42.03, supra, for time spent in jail pending final disposition of a cause is discretionary with the trial judge, such time not being part of the punishment. The allowance of credit, under Article 42.06, supra, for time served or punishment suffered from the time the judgment and sentence should have been entered and pronounced until finally entered is not discretionary with the trial court, but is mandatory.
The sentence upon relator’s judgment of conviction should have been pronounced on March 19, 1953, when relator was in fact originally sentenced in the void proceeding. Mandate affirming the conviction in that cause was issued by this Court on November 13, 1953, and relator’s punishment under that void sentence began on that date. At the time he was finally sentenced, relator had actually served in excess of 12 years on that sentence and, including compensatory time earned, had total time to credit of almost 19 years.
While Article 42.06 applies in situations where no judgment has been entered or sentence pronounced, I conclude that the second sentence of that statute is also applicable where the sentence pronounced is void, thereby necessitating re-sentencing, as a void sentence is, in effect, no sentence at all. The result is that where time has been served under a void sentence the amount of time served must be credited on the corrected sentence. I think it was mandatory that relator receive credit for this time when he was re-sentenced on February 4, 1966, and the sentence pronounced on that date should be reformed to so reflect.
It is the writer’s view that relator having served in excess of the statutorily-fixed 10 year sentence for the offense of which he was convicted, his continued confinement is unlawful. Writ of habeas corpus should be granted and relator ordered discharged.
I respectfully dissent.
ON MOTION TO CONSOLIDATE WITH FERRELL vs. STATE, No. 38,660
WOODLEY, Judge.
Motion has been filed requesting that the affirmance of the judgment of conviction as reformed, in Cause No. 38,660, be withdrawn ; that said cause be consolidated with this Cause No. 39,724 and that the judgment of conviction be “reversed and rendered” because petitioner and appellant Ferrell has served in excess of 10 years. Ex parte Holley, 170 Tex.Cr.R. 206, 339 S.W.2d 903, is cited.
Ex parte Nations, 164 Tex.Cr.R. 611, 301 S.W.2d 675, and Ogle v. State, 43 Tex.Cr.R. 219, 63 S.W. 1009, are authority for our holding that petitioner is not entitled to discharge upon the theory that he may claim credit for the time served under the life *443sentence held by the Federal Court to be void.
Chief Justice Tuttle, writing for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Edge v. Wainwright, 347 F.2d 190, pointed out that Edge had served over 12 years of the 15 year sentence he was attacking collaterally, and said:
“It has not yet been held, to our knowledge, that the State could be precluded from retrying him on the manslaughter charge or from refusing to credit his twelve-year’s service against any subsequent sentence which might be imposed upon him. * * *
“The question is a knotty one which should be considered by the appellant and the counsel who will represent him upon remand. We express no opinion on whether it would be a denial of due process for the State to reincarcerate Edge for the same offense, if he is successful in obtaining habeas corpus relief, without any credit for the twelve years he has already served. The spectre of Edge’s being subjected to as much as twenty more years of prison is such, however, that we feel constrained expressly to allude to the problem.”
Judge Tuttle’s statement is appropriate here and we would be inclined to give serious consideration to petitioner’s motion to withdraw our affirmance of the judgment of conviction as reformed were it not for the fact that a re-examination of the record convinces us that the indictment is valid; that there was no reversible error at the trial; that sufficient evidence was introduced to sustain the jury’s finding that the offense of forgery for which petitioner was convicted in 1949 was committed after his conviction for robbery in 1941 became final, and that the judgment with punishment of life should have been affirmed.
(The indictment was introduced in evidence in which was set out the check alleged to have been forged, which check was dated November 19, 1948, the date on or about which the offense was alleged to have been committed.)
We were in error in sustaining the state’s motion to reform the judgment. The error was favorable to the petitioner and will not, at this late date in the term, be disturbed.
Petitioner’s motion to consolidate and for reversal is overruled.