Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant was convicted of the offense of driving while intoxicated. The court of appeals reversed the conviction, holding that the constitutional county judge erred in appointing a local municipal-court judge to preside in her place over defendant's motion to suppress hearing and that she should have granted his later request that she conduct another suppression hearing. The court held that it did not matter whether the municipal-court judge's orders denying defendant's motions to suppress were void because defendant adequately preserved his complaint.

A jury found defendant guilty of manslaughter, made an affirmative finding that he used a deadly weapon, and assessed his punishment at 20 years in prison. When subsequent DNA testing revealed that the biological material on the knife did not belong to the victim, the convicting court purported to grant defendant a new trial. The State appealed, and the court of appeals reversed. The court held that the convicting court lacked jurisdiction to order a new trial on the basis of its Article 64.04 finding and that the court of appeals should not have addressed the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to support that finding. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals' holding.

Defendant pleaded guilty to injury to a child and received five years' deferred adjudication and a fine. The conditions of his community supervision included sex offender evaluation and counseling, and required that he submit to, and show no deception on, polygraph tests. The court held that because adjudication hearings were administrative proceedings, in which there was no jury and the judge was not determining guilt of the original offense, the results of polygraph exams were admissible in revocation hearings if such evidence qualified as the basis for an expert opinion under Texas Rule of Evidence 703 and 705(a). Accordingly, the court reversed the court of appeals' reversal of the trial court's finding that defendant violated the terms of his community supervision.

Defendant was convicted of attempting to obtain a controlled substance "through use of a fraudulent prescription form." The court of appeals acquitted defendant because it found no evidence that she used a fraudulent prescription form after she attempted to scribble out a prescription for "2.5" milligram Lortab pills and make it look like "7.5." The court concluded that the State charged defendant with attempting to obtain a controlled substance "through use of a fraudulent prescription form." It then adduced evidence that defendant fraudulently altered information that was handwritten on a legitimate prescription form. While this evidence would have supported a conviction had the State charged defendant using other statutory manner and means that were available, the evidence does not support a conviction for the offense that was actually charged. Accordingly, the court agreed with the court of appeals judgment, albeit for different reasons, and affirmed the judgment of acquittal.

Defendant pled guilty to the offense of murder without an agreement for punishment. On direct appeal, the court of appeals affirmed the judgment (Moussazadeh I). Thereafter, defendant filed an application for habeas relief and the court denied relief because defendant "failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that his plea was induced by a misunderstanding of the applicable parole law which formed an essential element of the plea agreement." (Moussazadeh II). Defendant filed a subsequent application for writ of habeas corpus (Moussazadeh III) that asserted that trial counsel's mistaken advice regarding parole eligibility rendered his plea involuntary. The court concluded that Padilla v. Kentucky was not applicable to the facts before the court and its decisions in Ex part Evans and Moussazadeh II were incorrect. The court disavowed its prior decisions in those cases to the extent that they (1) required parole-eligibility misinformation to form an essential part of the plea agreement in order to make a showing of an involuntary plea that resulted from ineffective assistance of counsel, based upon such misinformation and (2) failed to appropriately recognize the distinction between parole eligibility and parole attainment. Accordingly, upon reconsideration, the court granted relief. Moussazadeh III was dismissed.

Defendant was convicted of murder and attempted murder and filed subsequent applications for writ of habeas corpus. The habeas court concluded that defendant was entitled to actual innocence relief. The court concluded that the State failed to disclose two police reports, identifying other potential suspects, which were material to defendant's case. Because the two undisclosed reports contained favorable evidence material to defendant's case and the State failed to disclose such evidence, the State violated defendant's constitutional right as expressed in Brady v. Maryland. When the court balanced the newly available evidence (including Brady evidence) with other exculpatory evidence and the evidence of guilt presented at trial, the court was satisfied that defendant had shown by clear and convincing evidence that no rational jury would convict him in light of the new evidence. The court reviewed the record and agreed that defendant had established that he was actually innocent and granted habeas relief

Defendant was convicted of possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine in an amount between four and 200 grams. At issue was whether the trial court erred in re-opening the hearing on the motion to suppress shortly after trial commenced to hear additional evidence outside the jury's presence in support of its pretrial denial of defendant's motion. Defendant contended that this procedure violated Rachal v. State. The court concluded that the court of appeals did not err in holding that the trial court's discretion to reopen the evidentiary hearing on defendant's motion to suppress and to entertain Judge Jacobs's testimony. Nor did the court of appeals err in going beyond the face of the warrant and relying on Judge Jacobs's testimony at the reopened motion-to-suppress hearing as sufficient to establish probable cause to issue defendant's arrest warrant, at least for the offense of failure to appear. Because defendant was arrested pursuant to a valid arrest warrant, the trial court did not err in denying defendant's motion to suppress the evidentiary fruit of that arrest. Accordingly, the judgment of the court of appeals affirming the trial court's judgment was affirmed.

Defendant challenged the court of appeal's holding that the trial court properly admitted appellant's un-Mirandized custodial statements made in response to "questioning attendant to an administrative 'booking' procedure." Defendant contended that the court of appeals erred by applying an abuse-of-discretion standard in reviewing the trial court's ruling that the questioning did not offend Texas Code of Criminal Procedure arts. 38.22, 3(a)(2) and 38.23(a); and by affirming the trial court's admission of the statements under the "booking question exception" to Miranda because "the officer's questions -- unlike routine booking questions -- were reasonably likely to elicit incriminating responses." The court concluded that the appellate court must generally review de novo whether a question came within the booking-question exception to Miranda, and that the court of appeals erred by affirming the trial court's admission of defendant's statements under that exception. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Defendant was charged with and convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. At issue was whether defendant's conviction was now void because the predicate felony conviction used to prove his felony status was set aside and the charge dismissed. The court held that to obtain a valid conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, the State must prove a defendant's felony status at the time of the possession of the firearm. Therefore, if defendant had the status of a felon at the time he possessed the firearm, a conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon was not void if the predicate felony conviction was subsequently set aside. Accordingly, defendant was not entitled to habeas corpus relief.

Defendant was convicted of murder and pled true to one enhancement count. At issue was whether the court of appeals erred in holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding that MySpace profiles were properly authenticated. Because there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to support a finding that the exhibits were what they purported to be - MySpace pages the contents of which defendant was responsible for - the court affirmed the trial judge and the court of appeals which had both concluded the same.