Bobby Carl Lennox AKA Bobby Carl Leanox v. the State of Texas

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TEXAS

NO. PD-0284-25

THE STATE OF TEXAS

v.

BOBBY CARL LENNOX, Appellee

ON STATE’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW FROM THE SIXTH COURT OF APPEALS LAMAR COUNTY

NEWELL, J., filed a concurring opinion in which RICHARDSON and WALKER, JJ., joined.

The forgery statute is messed up. The Legislature screwed it up when it

decided to add a value ladder to the statute in the way that it did. 1 Conceptually, it

1 See Floor Amend. 4 to Tex. H.B. No. 351, 85th Leg., R.S. (May 24, 2017) (offered by Sen. Burton). The original bill was focused on fines and court costs and not the forgery statute or attaching a value ladder to it. See H.B. No. 351, 85th Leg., R.S. (Tex. 2017) (introduced by Lennox Concurring — 2

leads to two provisions in the same statute that cannot co-exist. 2 I believe the

Court properly construes a bad statute as it was written. I would also add that the

way the statute was written leads to absurd results. And with no real extra-textual

sources to suggest any intent by the Legislature, the only thing this Court can say

with any confidence is the Legislature wanted to apply a value ladder to the forgery

statute. Without any more clear guidance to resolve this irreconcilable textual

ambiguity, I believe the rule of lenity requires this Court to call the “tie” in favor of

the defendant. 3 As the Court’s analysis leads to the same result, I join the Court’s

opinion.

Filed: January 29, 2026

Publish

Canales); see also A Bill to be Entitled an Act, Canales, Tex. H. Comm. Rep., 85-762, 85 R.S. (2017). 2 Compare Tex. Penal Code § 32.21(e-1), with § 32.21(d).

3 See Wooden v. United States, 595 U.S. 360, 388-392 (2022) (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (discussing in depth the history and development of the rule of lenity); Rule of Lenity, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019) (“The judicial doctrine holding that a court, in construing an ambiguous criminal statute that sets out multiple or inconsistent punishments, should resolve the ambiguity in favor of the more lenient punishment.”); see also Diruzzo v. State, 581 S.W.3d 788, 802 n. 22 (Tex. Crim. App. 2019)(noting that the rule of lenity applies when the proper construction of a statute is in insoluble doubt).