Bouie v. State

565 S.W.2d 543, 1978 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1140
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 17, 1978
Docket54711
StatusPublished
Cited by39 cases

This text of 565 S.W.2d 543 (Bouie v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bouie v. State, 565 S.W.2d 543, 1978 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1140 (Tex. 1978).

Opinions

OPINION

ODOM, Judge.

This is an appeal from a conviction for robbery by assault. Art. 1408, V.A.P.C. Punishment was enhanced on allegations and proof of two prior convictions. See Art. 63, V.A.P.C. and V.T.C.A., Penal Code Sec. 12.42(d).

Appellant first contends the trial court erred in allowing him to be retried as an habitual criminal after his first conviction, [545]*545in which he received ten years, was reversed. On appellant’s first conviction for this crime he pleaded guilty and received a ten year sentence. That conviction was reversed on appeal. Bouie v. State, 528 S.W.2d 587. Subsequently he was reindict-ed for this same crime, and the new indictment alleged two prior convictions for enhancement. Appellant again entered a plea of guilty to the offense, but pleaded not true to the enhancement allegations. His motion to dismiss the enhancement allegations was denied, and on finding the allegations true the court fixed his punishment at life.

Appellant relies on North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656, in which the court wrote:

“Due process of law, then, requires that vindictiveness against a defendant for having successfully attacked his first conviction must play no part in the sentence he receives after a new trial. And since fear of such vindictiveness may unconstitutionally deter a defendant’s exercise of the right to appeal or collaterally attack his first conviction, due process also requires that a defendant be freed of apprehension of such a retaliatory motivation on the part of the sentencing judge.
“In order to assure the absence of such a motivation, we have concluded that whenever a judge imposes a more severe sentence upon a defendant after a new trial, the reasons for his doing so must affirmatively appear. Those reasons must be based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding. And the factual data upon which the increased sentence is based must be made part of the record, so that the constitutional legitimacy of the increased sentence may be fully reviewed on appeal.”

In Alvarez v. State, 536 S.W.2d 357, 364, cert, denied 429 U.S. 924, 97 S.Ct. 325, 50 L.Ed.2d 292, this Court wrote:

“Vindictiveness is the evil object of North Carolina v. Pearce, and it is equally impermissible whether flowing from a judge or from a prosecutor.”

See also Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628. In Alvarez, supra, we also stated that where the penalty is fixed by law, as it was here, the increase may not be attributed to possible vindictiveness on the part of the judge. The focus of this issue, therefore, as in Alvarez, must turn to the prosecutor’s acts.

In Alvarez the controlling facts were these:

“Although the record does not show whether the first conviction rested upon a negotiated plea, it does show that appellant entered a plea of guilty and the State abandoned the enhancement allegations of the first indictment. On the second trial appellant elected to plead not guilty and be tried by a jury, and the State prosecuted its case on a new indictment containing the enhancement allegations that had been abandoned at the first trial. We perceive no reason why an accused who changes his plea from guilty to not guilty on retrial should be able at the same time to hold the State to the punishment sought or secured at the first trial.”

The facts in this case are entirely different from those presented in Alvarez. Here appellant entered pleas of guilty to the primary offense under both the first indictment and the second indictment. Also, the second indictment here alleged two prior convictions, whereas the first alleged one, and it was dismissed on the state’s motion.

In cases such as this one and Alvarez, where a conviction on a guilty plea is reversed on appeal and the State adds enhancement allegations on retrial, the constitutionality of the increased punishment so obtained turns on whether the prosecutor’s acts may have been the product of vindictive retaliation for the prior exercise of the accused’s right to appeal. In Alvarez we found no such indication of prosecutorial vindictiveness:

“Absent a showing of circumstances that would indicate prosecutorial vindictiveness, such as improper refusal to con[546]*546tinue to honor a plea bargain previously made, we are of the opinion that no violation of the principles of North Carolina v. Pearce has been shown. . . . We remain convinced that the disparity between the ten year sentence on appellant’s first trial and the life sentence on appellant’s second trial has not been shown to be anything other than a consequence of trial strategy, as opposed to prosecutorial vindictiveness." (Emphasis added.)

Prosecutorial vindictiveness is retaliation and distinguishable from trial strategy that is a matter of the defendant’s free choice with full knowledge of the consequences. This is precisely the distinction relied on by the United States Supreme Court in its recent decision in Bordenkircher v. Hayes, -U.S.-, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978). The court there said:

“[I]n the ‘give and take’ of plea bargaining, there is no such element of punishment or retaliation so long as the accused is free to accept or reject the prosecution’s offer.
“While confronting a defendant with the risk of more severe punishment clearly may have a ‘discouraging effect on the defendant’s assertion of his trial rights, the imposition of these difficult choices [is] an inevitable’ —and permissible— ‘attribute of any legitimate system which tolerates and encourages the negotiation of pleas.’ Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, at 31 [93 S.Ct. 1977, 36 L.Ed.2d 714]. It follows that, by tolerating and encouraging the negotiation of pleas, this Court has necessarily accepted as constitutionally legitimate the simple reality that the' prosecutor’s interest at the bargaining table is to persuade the defendant to forego his right to plead not guilty.”

If the prosecutor may increase the sought for punishment from five years to life because the defendant refuses to plead guilty at the first trial, as the court held permissible in Bordenkircher v. Hayes,

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Bluebook (online)
565 S.W.2d 543, 1978 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1140, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bouie-v-state-texcrimapp-1978.