Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Appellant was arrested pursuant to an Ector County complaint. He made bail and was released. Afterwards, at the behest of Midland County law enforcement, the complaining witness in the Ector County case contacted appellant and elicited incriminating statements from him. The question before the Court of Criminal Appeals was whether appellant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated when these statements were later used as primary evidence of guilt in the Ector County case. The Court concluded that appellant's right to counsel was violated with respect to the Ector County prosecution. View "Rubalcado v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Larry Berry owned a Budget Blinds franchise in San Antonio from 2004 to 2005. Starting in 2004, customers began complaining that appellant had taken payments for orders but never delivered products as promised. In 2005, after receiving multiple complaints, Budget Blinds terminated appellant's franchise agreement and compensated some of appellant's customers who had not received their orders. After the franchise agreement was terminated, appellant continued operating his business under the name Blinds Depot. He continued his practice of taking money for undelivered products. As a result, customers contacted police to report the matter. Appellant was arrested and charged with one count of aggregated misapplication of fiduciary property, and one count of aggregated theft of currency. Appellant was tried and convicted on both counts. The issue on appeal before the Court of Criminal Appeals was the meaning of the term "fiduciary capacity" as it appeared in the statute defining the offense of misapplication of fiduciary property. Interpreting the term in light of its plain meaning, the Court held that it encompassed only special relationships of confidence or trust in which one party is obligated to act primarily for the benefit of the other. Applying that plain meaning to the facts of this case, appellant was not acting in a fiduciary capacity when he took payments from customers then failed to deliver those goods as promised. Therefore, the Court found the evidence insufficient to support appellant's conviction for misapplication of fiduciary property in count one of the indictment under which he was tried. In light of the fact that appellant was also convicted on one count of aggregated theft in the same trial, the Court concluded that appellant was not entitled to a new punishment hearing on the theft charge for which he was convicted in count two. View "Berry v. Texas" on Justia Law

On original submission, the Court of Criminal Appeals held Section 33.02(b) of the Texas Penal Code facially unconstitutional. The State filed a motion for rehearing raising three grounds. The Court denied all three grounds, but wrote to address the State's first ground in which it alleged that the Court erred by finding Penal Code Section 33.02(b) unconstitutional without first providing notice to the attorney general pursuant to Section 402.010 of the Texas Government Code. View "Ex parte John Lo" on Justia Law

Appellant David Brown was on trial for murder. On what would have been the final day of trial in the guilt phase, appellant sustained a gunshot wound to the head. After a one-day recess, the trial judge ruled that appellant's absence from trial was voluntary because there was evidence that the injury may have been self-inflicted. The court conducted the remainder of the guilt trial and the entire punishment trial in appellant's absence. Appellant appealed the trial court's refusal to hold a formal hearing to determine whether he was incompetent to stand trial after sustaining the gunshot wound. The appellate court held that appellant should have been granted a competence hearing before the jury made its guilt determination and remanded the cause for a new trial. The Court of Criminal Appeals granted the state's petition for discretionary review on four grounds, but because the Court found that the trial court did not follow relevant procedures set out in Texas statutes and Supreme Court precedent, it remanded this case back to that court for a retrospective hearing to determine whether appellant was incompetent at any or all of the guilt and punishment phases and sentencing. View "Brown v. Texas" on Justia Law

When appellant was arrested and charged with sexual assault, he filled out a financial affidavit indicating that he was indigent. He was a 48-year-old carpenter who had lost his job a month earlier and was living in his former wife's home with two of his children. He swore that had no cash, no credit, no income, no real estate, no car, and he paid no rent, utilities, or other monthly bills. The trial judge appointed him a lawyer, and granted his requests for investigative and expert witness fees. The trial judge set bail at $250,000, and appellant remained in jail for seventeen months until his trial. Appellant was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to ten years' probation and an unprobated $10,000 fine. At the sentencing hearing, the prosecution recommended, and the trial judge ordered, that appellant be fitted with a "SCRAM" device once he was released from the ISF. Defense counsel objected to requiring appellant to pay for the SCRAM device because appellant was, and had been, indigent for so long. In all, appellant was ordered to pay $10,461.19 in fines and court costs; $6,675.00 in attorneys fees; $600.00 in sex-offender supervision fees; and $6,000.00 in probation supervision fees for a total of $23,736.19 over the life of the ten-year probation or an average of nearly $200.00 a month. On top of that, appellant was ordered to pay the undetermined amounts for both the Alcohol/Drug Assessment Program and the SCRAM device. Appellant was also ordered to perform 140 hours of community service. The court of appeals held that appellant had properly preserved his complaint that he was indigent and could not afford to pay for a SCRAM device; therefore, it modified the trial court's judgment to delete the condition that appellant pay for the costs of the SCRAM device. The State appealed that modification. The Court of Criminal Appeals agreed that the trial judge did not actually "consider" appellant's ability to pay for a SCRAM device at the time of sentencing. But it disagreed that the remedy was to simply delete the SCRAM requirement. Instead, the Court remanded the case for the trial judge to be given an opportunity to consider appellant's financial ability in deciding whether to order appellant to pay for a SCRAM device. View "Mathis v. Texas" on Justia Law

Relator Rosali Bonilla was an inmate serving a sentence for aggravated sexual assault. He wrote a letter to the Harris County District Clerk asking for information about the amount that it would cost to buy his trial and appellate transcripts. The district clerk declined the request in accordance with his office policy. The Court of Criminal Appeals found that when it declined to provide any information about the amount it would cost to purchase a trial and appellate transcript, the district clerk deprived relator of his constitutional right to have access to the courts. The Court concluded that, when the information sought by an imprisoned individual relates only to the amount that it would cost to obtain trial and appellate transcripts for use in preparing an application for a writ of habeas corpus, application of Section 552.028 to deny the prisoner access to that information unconstitutionally infringes on his federal constitutional right to have access to the courts. In this case, though relator established that he had no adequate remedy at law and a clear right to relief, the Court declined to grant his request for relief in this application for a writ of mandamus because, while this case was under abatement, the district clerk provided the information to him, therefore his request for relief was rendered moot. View "In re Bonilla" on Justia Law

A jury convicted applicant of the offense of capital murder. In his application for a writ of habeas corpus, applicant claimed that his mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a crime he committed as a juvenile, violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution under "Miller v. Alabama." Applicant's sentence was imposed, and his conviction affirmed on direct appeal, before the Supreme Court announced its decision in "Miller." The Court of Criminal Appeals ordered that this application be filed and set to decide if "Miller" applied retroactively to a claim raised in a post-conviction proceeding, and, if so, what remedy was appropriate. Because the Texas Court found that the Miller court announced a new substantive rule under the first Teague exception, it held that it applied retroactively. The case was therefore remanded for further sentencing proceedings not inconsistent with "Miller v. Alabama." View "Ex parte Maxwell" on Justia Law

Darrell Cockrell did not receive an interpreter, and was not able to understand a substantial portion of the proceedings at his jury trial. He applied for habeas relief, arguing his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to seek accommodations for his deafness. He further argued that, as a result of counsel's errors at trial, he was deprived of his constitutional rights to confront the witnesses against him, to understand the nature and substance of the trial proceedings, and to assist in his own defense. The Court of Criminal Appeals agreed with applicant and concluded that trial counsel's failure to request an interpreter constituted deficient performance and that applicant was prejudiced as a result of counsel's error. The case was remanded for a new trial. View "Ex parte Cockrell" on Justia Law

In 2008, appellant plead guilty to burglary of a habitation and, pursuant to a plea agreement, was placed on three years' deferred-adjudication community supervision and fined $300. The Order of Deferred Adjudication included a designation of court costs of $203. Appellant did not appeal. Later that year, the state filed a motion to adjudicate appellant's guilt. In 2012, the trial court adjudicated appellant's guilt and assessed punishment at two years' incarceration and a $300 fine. The judgment adjudicating guilt also specifically included a designation of court costs of $240. Accompanying that judgment in the clerk's record were three pages that purported to be a "cost bill assessment" and contained specific amounts for several kinds of costs. Those pages also contain a stamp and the signature of a deputy district clerk dated several weeks after the date on which the trial judge signed and entered the judgment adjudicating guilt. On direct appeal, appellant complained that the judgment reflected court costs that were not substantiated by the record and asserted that the list of court costs was not a proper "cost bill" because it was generated well after the judgment and afforded him no opportunity to object. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in part, and reversed in part: the court of appeals had jurisdiction to consider the appeal of the remaining $37 of the assessed court costs. Because the court of appeals did not have the benefit of recent case law when it addressed appellant's claims challenging the court-costs assessment, the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the state's grounds one, three, and four and remanded to the court of appeals to reconsider appellant's claims regarding the assessment of court costs in light of that case law. View "Perez v. Texas" on Justia Law

During voir dire, the judge presiding over appellant Damian Easley's family-violence assault trial prohibited counsel from discussing different legal standards of proof and contrasting those with standards with the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard applicable in criminal trials. The jury convicted Easley, and he was sentenced to twenty years' confinement. He appealed the judge's refusal to allow him to explore the differing burdens of proof. The appellate court reversed, concluding that the judge erred in refusing to allow Easley's counsel to question the jury panel on the differences between the criminal and civil burdens of proof, but that the error was a non-constitutional error for purposes of a harm analysis and was harmless because it did not affect a substantial right. After its review, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed and overruled previous cases holding that preventing a defendant's counsel from asking proper questions of the venire was an error of constitutional dimension per se. View "Easley v. Texas" on Justia Law