Thornton v. State

OPINION ON MOTIONS FOR REHEARING

CLINTON, Judge.

This case has a somewhat unique history. In cause number 60,310, currently before us on the State’s motion for rehearing, a panel of this Court on original submission of an appeal from an order revoking probation reversed the primary conviction and ordered a judgment of acquittal. The panel held that where the indictment for the primary offense alleged the offense of forgery by passing and appellant “judicially confessed” to the offense of forgery by making, and there was no evidence tending to support appellant’s conviction for the former offense, appellant could successfully collaterally attack the validity of his conviction. See Ex parte Moffett, 542 S.W.2d 184 (Tex.Cr.App.1976); Ex parte Dantzler, 571 S.W.2d 536 (Tex.Cr.App.1978). This Court’s decision was delivered on November 21, 1979 as was the panel decision in cause number 62,218, currently before us on the appellant’s motion for rehearing.

Cause Number 62,218 similarly involved an appeal taken from a second order revoking probation after appellant had been admitted to bail pending our disposition of cause number 60,310. The unpublished panel opinion, 589 S.W.2d 721, in cause number 62,218, which is now withdrawn, declined to decide his “no evidence” contention (successfully advanced by appellant in cause number 60,310) because a record of the evidence adduced at the guilty plea hearing on the primary offense had not been included in that appellate record. Wolfe v. State, 560 S.W.2d 686, 688 (Tex.Cr. App.1978); see Traylor v. State, 561 S.W.2d 492, 494-95 (Tex.Cr.App.1978).

We granted appellant leave to file a motion for rehearing in cause number 62,218 in view of his vigorous contention that the reversal and reformation of the judgment in cause number 60,310 to show an acquittal mandates that the panel opinion in cause number 62,218 be similarly reformed. Additionally, we granted the State leave to file a motion for rehearing in cause number 60,310 to consider its stoutly urged position that the dictates of Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141,57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978) and Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19, 98 S.Ct. 2151, 57 L.Ed.2d 15 (1978) do not apply to *344pleas of guilty. For reasons that follow, we find with appellant in both causes.

Turning first to cause number 60,310, the finding of “no evidence” by the panel is not contested by the State, and is correct. Any further discussion of that matter would not be at all edifying.

As to the State’s contention that Burks v. United States, and Greene v. Massey, both supra, do not apply in situations where the accused pleads guilty, we believe that a reading of those cases clearly shows it is without merit.

Burks v. United States, supra, at 11, 98 S.Ct. at 2147, teaches that the Double Jeopardy Clause forbids a second trial for the purpose of affording the prosecution another opportunity to supply evidence which it failed to muster in the first proceeding. In distinguishing between those instances where an accused is afforded a new trial on the basis of “trial error” [i. e., incorrect receipt or rejection of evidence, incorrect instructions, prosecutorial misconduct] and those cases where the basis for appellate reversal is evidentiary insufficiency, the Court pointed out:

“In short, reversal for trial error, as distinguished from evidentiary insufficiency, does not constitute a decision that the government has failed to prove its case. As such, it implies nothing with respect to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. . . . When this occurs, the accused has a strong interest in obtaining a fair readjudication of his guilt free from error, just as society maintains a valid concern for insuring that the guilty are punished.
“The same cannot be said when a defendant’s conviction has been overturned due to a failure of proof at trial, in which case the prosecution cannot complain of prejudice, for it has been given one fair opportunity to offer whatever proof it could assemble.”1

Id. at 16, 98 S.Ct. at 2149 [footnote omitted].

The State would have us accept the notion that society would seemingly have no interest in denying the State that “second bite at the apple” where the record “contains not one scratch of a pen to indicate innocence.” Yet to adopt this rationale is to blink at the jeopardy lessons of Burks. The principle at work is failure to prove guilt, not indications of innocence. All sorts of considerations may motivate a guilty plea.2 And while it is true that an accused is not entitled to have his plea accepted, North Carolina v. Alford, note 2, once he tenders it and the State proceeds to prosecute on that basis, clearly jeopardy has attached.3 Just as the State has the burden of proof in a jury trial on a plea of not guilty, so also under Article 1.15, V.A.C. C.P.4 in a bench trial on a plea of not guilty and a plea of guilty or nolo contendere.5

*345The matter before the Court is, so far as we have ascertained, one of first impression. Yet, it is beyond argument that appellant could not be convicted for the charged offense of forgery by passing, regardless of his entry of a guilty plea to such offense, if the State’s Evidence proved only that he committed the offense of forgery by making. See Reid v. State, 560 S.W.2d 99 (Tex.Cr.App.1978). As the Supreme Court noted in Burks v. United States:

“. . . [I]t is difficult to conceive how society has any greater interest in retrying a defendant when, on review, it is decided as a matter of law that the jury could not properly have returned a verdict of guilty.”

Id. 437 U.S. at 16,98 S.Ct. at 2150. There is no greater societal interest we perceive in retrying an accused after a judge has done what a jury may not. The trial court, as a matter of law, while empowered to accept the guilty plea, was not authorized to find him guilty on the basis of the State’s evidence.6 We agree with the Supreme Court that there is no compelling interest in retrying an accused after the State has already had “its turn at bat” — before a judge or jury — though the Supreme Court spoke in the context of a jury trial.

But in Texas, impelled by experienced abuse and oppression inflicted on them as citizens in earlier governments,7 the Framers of the Constitution of the Republic insisted upon trial “by an impartial jury,” Constitution of 1836, Sixth Declaration of Rights, 3 Vernon’s Texas Constitution 535; today, as adopted in 1876, Article I, Section 10, grants an accused the right to trial “by an impartial jury,” 1 Vernon’s Texas Constitution 266, and Section 15, id., at 356 mandates, “The right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.”

*346So it was that, early on, while pleas of guilty were permitted, one was regarded not the equivalent of a confession of judgment in civil proceedings but rather nothing more than an acknowledgement of the facts charged, and whether those facts constituted an offense was left open to be decided by the court, Crow v. State, 6 Tex. 334 (1851); if they did, still the law mandated that a jury assess punishment. See Article 26.14, V.A.C.C.P. and its predecessors. The public policy considerations underlying the hybrid procedure, often overlooked even today, are considerable, just as they were when explained by Presiding Judge W. L. Davidson in Woodall v. State, 58 Tex.Cr.R. 513, 126 S.W. 591, 593:

“. . . Of course, this article means that evidence must be introduced before the jury, so that the state and the defendant may be protected in their respective rights, the defendant getting the benefit of any amelioration or extenuation, and the state any aggravating circumstances that might attend the commission of the offense; and, it has been held that this statute is mandatory, and, instead of being merely for the benefit of the defendant, it is more especially designed to protect the interest of the state, by preventing aggravated cases of crime being compromised by the assessment of the minimum punishment.”

And from experience in effectuating the procedure arose a manifestly just rule that although an accused plead guilty “and the facts develop that he is not guilty . it would be the duty of the court to see that no conviction was had” for, as the Court insisted in Harris v. State, 76 Tex.Cr.R. 176, 172 S.W. 975, 977 (Tex.Cr.App.1915):

“. . . Our law only authorizes a conviction where guilt is shown. If there be no legal guilt, a conviction could not be sustained, although the defendant entered a plea of guilty.”

With this significant historical background and an attributed awareness of settled policy determinations, in 1931 by former Articles 10a, 11 and 12, C.C.P. 1925, did the Legislature authorize waiver of jury trial in a non-capital felony case upon entry of a plea of guilty by the accused.8 McMillan v. State, 122 Tex.Cr.R. 583, 57 S.W.2d 125 (1933) held that the Legislature was empowered to do so, and in Bolton v. State, 123 Tex.Cr.R. 543, 59 S.W.2d 833 (1933) the Court further explained that the 1931 act provided “a way in which an accused, under the formalities specified, could have a trial before the judge without a jury upon a plea of guilty,” pointing to the following requirement that the Court underscored:

“. . . It shall be necessary for the State to introduce evidence into the record showing the guilt of the defendant, and said evidence shall be accepted by the Court as the basis for its verdict, and in no event shall a person charged be convicted upon his plea of guilty without evidence to support the same.”

Today in Article 1.15, supra, the sentence reads as a proviso, and “verdict” has been changed to “judgment:”

“. . . provided, however, that it shall be necessary for the State to introduce evidence into the record showing the guilt of the defendant and said evidence shall be accepted by the court as the basis for its judgment and in no event shall a person charged be convicted upon his plea without sufficient evidence to support the same.”

Thus the constitutional principle involved here is rooted in the federal and State guarantees of right to trial by jury 9 *347rather than considerations of due process or due course of law. But even for due process purposes it is entirely too simplistic merely to invoke the common law notion of a plea of guilty since, before it may be given that effect, the plea must satisfy stringent procedural requirements constitutionally and statutorily imposed.10 Accordingly, it is settled that regardless of the depth of one’s desire to enter a plea of guilty an accused does not have a constitutional right to have it accepted by the trial court. North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 38 n. 11,11 91 S.Ct. 160, 168 n. 11, 27 L.Ed.2d 162 (1970). Yet, “In view of the strong factual basis for the plea demonstrated by the State12 and Alford’s clearly expressed desire to enter it despite his professed belief in his innocence, we hold that the trial judge did not commit constitutional error in accepting it,” id., at 38, 91 S.Ct. at 168. In Texas, evidence is received to support the judgment, not to accept a plea.

Clearly, then, the federal constitutional principle guiding the Supreme Court in Alford is that the States are free to reject the common law effect of a plea of guilty and adopt their own measures to govern their own trial courts in trying the guilty plea case, including a requirement that sufficient evidence be presented by the State to show guilt. In short, the concept of “Our Federalism”13 militates against directed application of the federal view of consequences of a guilty plea to an otherwise constitutional procedure adopted by a State to convict on a guilty plea when trial by jury has been waived. Indeed, just such a “hands-off” attitude is reflected generally by the Brady trilogy14 and particularly in Brady, itself, when indicating what is expected of the States’ guilty plea trials:

“. . This mode of conviction is not more foolproof than full trials to the court or to the jury. Accordingly, we take great precautions against unsound results, and we should continue to do so, whether conviction is by plea or by trial. * * * But our view ... is based on our expectations that courts will satisfy themselves that pleas of guilty are voluntarily and intelligently made by competent defendants with adequate advice of counsel and that there is nothing to question the accuracy and reliability of the defendants’ admissions that they committed the crimes with which they are charged.” Id., at 264-265.

Obviously the requirements of Article 1.15, supra, that the State produce proof of the *348“accuracy and reliability” of the guilty plea, more than meets the expectations of the Supreme Court and certainly is not likely to be disapproved because it goes beyond the federal common law doctrine of conviction by guilty plea. That is substantially what Alford, supra, holds.

Thus, it matters not at all that the common law viewed a plea of guilty as a conviction, nor is it all that clear that such view is “the constitutional sense.” What does matter and what is clear is that Texas is not, and patently has not subjected itself to be, bound by any such federal common law doctrine of conviction by plea. That doctrine simply has not been imposed on the criminal law of this State by the Constitution of the United States or by the Supreme Court of the United States directly or through Fourteenth Amendment “incorporation” or any other fashion. The dissent cites no authority and we venture the thought that there is none. To the contrary, as has been demonstrated ante, the proscription of Article 1.15 that “in no event shall a person charged be convicted upon his plea without sufficient evidence to support the same” not only passes constitutional muster but also has little to do with admonishing an accused before accepting a guilty plea.15

Therefore, based on deeply felt and stoutly maintained considerations of public policy that produced, inter alia, Article I, §§ 10 and 15 of the Constitution of Texas and Article 1.15 of its code of criminal procedure, and borrowing the Burks-Greene rationale, we hold that the jeopardy proscriptions of Article I, § 14 of the Constitution of Texas and its implementing statutory provisions are fully applicable to a trial of a guilty plea where the evidence introduced by the State to show the guilt of an accused and accepted by the trial court fail as a matter of law to constitute sufficient evidence to support the judgment of conviction.

The State’s motion for rehearing in cause number 60,310 is denied; and appellant’s motion for rehearing in cause number 62,-218 is granted and the affirmance in the latter cause is withdrawn and the revocation proceeding is ordered dismissed.

It is so ordered.

. All emphasis is supplied throughout by the writer of this opinion unless otherwise indicated.

. See Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970) and North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 91 S.Ct. 160, 27 L.Ed.2d 162 (1970).

. Whether when he pled to the indictment, Vardas v. State, 518 S.W.2d 826 (Tex.Cr.App.1975), or when the trial court began to receive evidence, Serfass v. United States, 420 U.S. 377, 95 S.Ct. 1055, 43 L.Ed.2d 265 (1975), or to consider an agreed statement of facts in the form of a written judicial confession offered by the State, Finch v. United States, 433 U.S. 676, 97 S.Ct. 2909, 53 L.Ed.2d 1048 (1977), appellant was placed in jeopardy.

. In his Special Commentary following Article 1.15, supra, Presiding Judge Onion writes, “In felonies less than capital where the defendant has entered a plea (of guilty, nolo-contendere, or not guilty) before the court after waiving jury trial, the State is required to produce sufficient evidence to support the guilt of the defendant.”

. The instant case comes to us as an appeal from a guilty plea trial and is, therefore, on a different footing than the Duran litigation, upon which the dissent relies. Obviously through inadvertence, the writer being the same, the dissent says Duran entered a plea of guilty; but the cause number 53,652 at issue in Duran v. State, 552 S.W.2d 840 (Tex.Cr.App. 1977) was tried on a plea of not guilty, id., at 842. Further, we observe that the problem in

*345Duran was a purported oral stipulation, without written consent by accused and approval by the trial court to its introduction, id., at 843, whereas here there were just such consent and approval, as well as a written judicial confession to an offense — albeit not the one alleged in the indictment. Accordingly, we need not now determine whether Ex parte Duran, 581 S.W.2d 683 (Tex.Cr.App. 1979) was correctly decided, for its factual basis is distinguishable.

. The core of the dissent is that appellant’s plea of guilty “in the constitutional sense, was sufficient evidence to sustain the judgment of conviction.” No authority is cited — constitutional provision, judicial decision, treatise or other work — to support the concept, and we have found none. To be sure, at English common law a “conviction” was “the confession of the accused in open court or the verdict returned against him by the jury,” Black’s Law Dictionary (Rev. Fourth Ed.) 403, or as Blackstone put it, “[a] conviction may occur two ways: Either by his confessing the offense and pleading guilty, or by his being found so by the verdict of his country,” 4 Blackstone Commentaries 262. In this country there is, also, “federal common law” to which federal courts resort to resolve a federal question as to which the federal Constitution, treaties and statutes are silent, 15A C.J.S. Common Law § 16 at p. 73. In Federal Courts, that is based, in part at least, on “so much of the common law as may be implied in the subject,” Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 465, 479, 8 S.Ct. 564, 569, 31 L.Ed. 508 (1888); see also 36 C.J.S. Federal Courts § 169(2) at pp. 353-354 — Sources of Federal Law. The statement by Mr. Justice Douglas in Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1979), quoted in the dissenting opinion, mirrors the English and certainly is a part of the federal common law, but neither Mr. Justice Douglas nor the opinion he invites us to see, Kercheval v. United States, 274 U.S. 220, 47 S.Ct. 582, 71 L.Ed. 1009 (1927), even suggests the proposition is derived from a constitutional provision, or is of constitutional dimension. It is not, as the earlier opinion by Mr. Justice Black in Von Moltke v. Gillies, 332 U.S. 708, 68 S.Ct. 316, 92 L.Ed. 309 (1948) demonstrates by citing authorities in support of the Kercheval declaration — every one of them, Blackstone, Bowyer and Orfield, being direct English common law commentaries or indirectly drawn from that source, id., at 719, n.5, 68 S.Ct. at 321, n.5; see also Orfield, Criminal Procedure from Arrest to Appeal (1974 edition) 291, note 114. The doctrine, adopted from the English common law, has become part of the federal common law; it is not of constitutional origin.

. One of the grievances forcefully expressed in The Declaration of Independence by the Delegates of The People of Texas was that the government “has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.” 3 Vernon’s Texas Constitution 520.

For a short history of trial by jury in criminal cases elsewhere, see Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 151-153, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 1448-1450, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968).

. As amended and added to by Acts 1931, 42nd Leg., ch. 43, p. 65, §§ 1,2, and 3, these articles conditioned effectiveness of the waiver by an accused upon consent and approval by the State and the trial court, thereby guaranteeing a right of trial by jury to the prosecution in order to preserve those interests of the State that Presiding Judge Davidson found in Wood-all, supra, the earlier law was designed to protect.

. Article 1.15, supra, is a prohibition against convicting an accused of a felony except upon the verdict of a jury unless in other than capital cases the accused waives his right to trial by jury and the consequential requirements of proof are met by the State. By withholding *347consent, however, the State preserves its right to a jury.

. Article 26.13, V.A.C.C.P., and its federal counterpart, Rule 11, F.R.Crim.P., were intended and are frequently redesigned to “govem[] the duty of the trial judge before accepting a guilty plea,” Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 243, n.5, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 1712, n.5, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969). Under the former a proper admonishment by the trial court is mandatory, e. g., Ex parte Jordan, 490 S.W.2d 585 (Tex.Cr.App. 1973) and under the latter “prejudice inheres” in failure of a trial judge to comply with its requirements, McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 471, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 1173, 22 L.Ed.2d 418 (1969).

. “Our holding does not mean that a trial judge must accept every constitutionally valid guilty plea merely because a defendant wishes so to plead. A criminal defendant does not have an absolute right under the Constitution to have his guilty plea accepted by the court . . . although the States may by statute or otherwise confer such a right. Likewise, the States may bar their courts from accepting guilty pleas from any defendants who assert their innocence.”

. From the following account we guess that the procedure for a trial on a plea of guilty is somewhat similar to our own:

“Before the plea was finally accepted by the trial court, the court heard the sworn testimony of a police officer who summarized the State’s case. Two other witnesses were also heard. * * * After the summary presentation of the State’s case, Alford took the stand and testified that he had not committed the murder but that he was pleading guilty because he faced the threat of the death penalty if he did not do so.”

. Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157, 163, 63 S.Ct. 877, 881, 87 L.Ed. 1324 (1942).

. Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970); McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 90 S.Ct. 1441, 25 L.Ed.2d 763 (1970); Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U.S. 790, 90 S.Ct. 1458, 25 L.Ed.2d 785 (1970).

. Which, of course, is what Rule 11, supra, is all about. McCarthy v. United States, supra, United States v. Dayton, 604 F.2d 931 (5 Cir. En Banc 1979); see also United States v. Johnson, 546 F.2d 1225 (5 Cir. 1977) for a delineation of that which constitutes “a factual basis” for a guilty plea in order for a federal court to accept it.