Court Opinion

ID: 9642679
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:06:08.247364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:50.931218
License: Public Domain

MEYERS, Judge,
concurring.
The only question presented on discretionary review in this case is whether the phrase “appointed counsel” in article 1.051(e) of the Code of Criminal Procedure includes an attorney appointed by the court to succeed one whom the court has let withdraw. The relevant facts are not in dispute. Shortly before his trial, the attorney appointed to represent appellant moved to withdraw and asked the court to substitute a different lawyer in his place. This motion was granted, apparently with the appellant’s approval. The case was not reset, however, and went to trial only six days after the appointment of appellant’s new lawyer. Neither he nor his lawyer objected to this procedure at the time. But on appeal he argued that his conviction should be set aside and a new trial ordered because his attorney did not have ten days to prepare for trial.
The law controlling this issue provides that “[a]n appointed counsel is entitled to 10 days to prepare for a proceeding but may waive the preparation time with the consent of the defendant in writing or on the record in open court.” Tex.Code Crim.Pro.Ann. art. 1.051(e) (West Supp.1994). Although no such waiver is reflected in the appellate record, a *273divided panel of the Austin Court of Appeals affirmed appellant’s conviction, holding that article 1.051(e) does not apply to the appointment of substitute counsel. Marin v. State, 862 S.W.2d 183 (Tex.App.—Austin 1993).
No one questions the fact that substitute counsel was actually “appointed” within the meaning of article 1.051(e). But Justice Powers, writing for the lower court, reasoned that the Legislature could not have intended to afford substitute attorneys appointed by the court the same preparation time as attorneys first appointed by the court because it would empower the defendant to “extendí 1 indefinitely the mandatory preparation time required by the statute[.]” Marin, 862 S.W.2d at 185. He argued that the “theory of literalness” relied upon by appellant for the proposition that all appointed attorneys are entitled to ten days of preparation time before trial was necessarily rejected by this Court in past examinations of article 1.051(e). He calls particular attention to Roney v. State, 632 S.W.2d 598 (Tex.Crim.App.1982) and Henry v. State, 433 S.W.2d 430 (Tex.Crim.App.1968), in which we effectively held that only one appointed attorney need be given the full preparation period prescribed by law.
That holding seems to have been original with the Court in Henry, and our entire rationale supporting it was that:
[t]he trial judge was under no obligation to appoint more than one counsel, and the fact that he afforded the appellant the assistance of additional counsel under the circumstances here described should not call for reversal merely because such written waiver was not signed by the appellant and his additional counsel before trial. Süch was not the legislative intent of Article 26.04 [the predecessor of article 1.051(e).]
433 S.W.2d at 433. We did not explain in Henry why the described circumstances “should not call for reversal” nor what we imagined the “legislative intent” really to be. Neither did we elaborate our position later in Roney when we relied upon Henry to reach the same result under much the same circumstances. But both opinions were written at a time when we had not yet come to accept that the role of the judiciary in Texas government is to implement the legislative will as the Legislature has expressed it, not as we think it should have been expressed or as the Legislature may have intended to express it. See Boykin, 818 S.W.2d at 785. See also, e.g., Johnson v. State, 871 S.W.2d 744, 749 (Tex.Crim.App.1994); Moore v. State, 868 S.W.2d 787, 791 (Tex.Crim.App.1994); Hernandez v. State, 861 S.W.2d 908, 909 (Tex.Crim.App.1993); Midler v. State, 829 S.W.2d 805, 808 (Tex.Crim.App.1992).
On its face, the statute plainly and unambiguously provides that “[a]n appointed counsel is entitled to 10 days to prepare^]” Its language is not susceptible of the interpretation that some appointed lawyers are entitled to 10 days but that others are not. The majority maintains, as did Justice Onion dissenting in the lower court, that Henry and Roney are distinguishable from the instant cause because the issue presented in those cases involved the appointment of additional, not substitute, counsel. Certainly, this difference might be a persuasive basis upon which to discriminate between appointed attorneys who should, as a matter of public policy, be given full preparation time and those who should not. But the statute we are called upon to implement plainly does not express this distinction, even though the distinction could clearly and succinctly have been expressed without any difficulty.
For my own part, I do not know what the Legislature actually intended when it enacted article 1.051(e). But I find no ambiguity or absurdity in the statute’s plain language that might require for its resolution an examination of the statute’s legislative history. Boykin v. State, 818 S.W.2d 782, 785-86 (Tex.Crim.App.1991). Neither do I know whether the Legislature actually took time before enacting the statute to forecast the cases to which it might apply. But it does not seem to me that the instant cause is so unusual that diligent legislators could not have anticipated it. I therefore see no reason to interpret the controlling law in this case differently than its plain language requires.
Of course, I am willing to accept that the purport of the statute is to assure appointed *274counsel enough time to prepare for trial, so as to optimize the probability indigent defendants will be represented effectively. Imposing an absolute requirement that all appointed counsel be afforded at least ten days in which to prepare, as the statute evidently does, might have been thought by the Legislature a reasonable means of accomplishing this goal. Supposing the Legislature thought that trial judges should never appoint substitute counsel unless necessary to the effective representation of an indigent defendant, it might well have been the Legislature’s deliberate strategy to insist that all such attorneys, whether original or substitute, being thus necessary to the defense, have a minimum period of preparation. Because, from the face of the statute, it appears that this is what the Legislature in fact did, the courts are not at liberty to speculate that our lawmakers might really have had another purpose in mind which the statute on its face does not effectively accomplish or that the means chosen to accomplish it have put too heavy a burden on trial judges. Our job, and the job of judges at all levels, is to implement exactly the will of the Legislature as it is expressed in the written law, except when it would violate the constitution of Texas or of the United States to do so. Garcia v. State, 829 S.W.2d 796, 799-800 (Tex.Crim.App.1992).
For this reason I think Henry and Roney should be overruled. Although those cases arose in a slightly different factual context, the propositions of law upon which this Court expressly relied apply equally to the factual context presented in the instant cause. This Court did not deny relief to Henry and Roney because they were continuously represented by at least one attorney with more than ten days of preparation time, as the majority suggests. Rather, it is clear from our opinions in both cases that relief was denied upon the ground that the first appointed attorney is the only appointed attorney entitled to ten days of preparation under the statute. I therefore agree with the Court of Appeals that Henry and Roney “implicitly rejected” the reading of article 1.051(e) that substitute appointed counsel have a right to 10 days in which to prepare for “a proceeding.”
Although Henry and Roney are distinguishable from the instant cause in exactly the way the majority describes, the majority’s distinction is not relevant to the holding in those cases. Because the plain language of article 1.051(e) provides that all appointed attorneys be given at least ten days to prepare for court, I would hold that substitute and additional counsel who have been appointed pursuant to the statute are entitled to as much preparation time as any attorney initially appointed by the court.
I do not mean by this to express any view on the method according to which preparation time should be calculated. In particular I do not suggest that an attorney who has made an appearance for, or otherwise been engaged to represent, an accused prior to the date of his appointment must be given ten additional days to prepare for trial following the date of his appointment. See Henson v. State, 530 S.W.2d 584 (Tex.Crim.App.1975); Meeks v. State, 456 S.W.2d 938 (Tex.Crim.App.1970). Questions of this kind are not before us in the instant cause, and I would imply no opinion concerning them.
Finally, as regards the fear that defendants will somehow seize control of court dockets, forcing interminable delays by substituting counsel repeatedly on the eve of trial, no such dire consequence is likely to follow from the Court’s opinion in this case. A trial judge is free under most circumstances to deny outright a request for the substitution of appointed counsel, particularly when such request comes near the date of trial. See Webb v. State, 533 S.W.2d 780, 783-84 (Tex.Crim.App.1976); Gonzales v. State, 532 S.W.2d 343, 345 (Tex.Crim.App.1976); Gleffe v. State, 501 S.W.2d 672 (Tex.Crim.App.1973). There is nothing in the record of this case to suggest that the judge could not have done so here. Moreover, being at liberty to deny the substitution, he might instead have decided to grant it only upon the condition that substitute counsel and the defendant agree to waive counsel’s preparation time in the manner required by law. Burgess v. State, 816 S.W.2d 424, 428-29 (Tex.Crim.App.1991). There is likewise nothing in the record to suggest that he *275could not have pursued this option in the instant cause. What seems far more likely is that the trial judge in this case was simply unaware of article 1.051(e) or had forgotten its requirements when he granted appellant’s motion for substitute counsel without resetting the date of trial. I would not wish to presume, absent persuasive evidence to the contrary, that he deliberately ignored the statute’s clear mandate.
Accordingly, although I disagree with the Court’s analysis, believing its interpretation of article 1.051(e) to be erroneous, I agree that the judgments of the Third Court of Appeals and of the 27th District Court of Bell County should be reversed, and that this cause should be remanded to the trial court.