Braylen Kyyon Pruitt v. the State of Texas

Opinion

In the

Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth

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No. 02-25-00291-CR

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BRAYLEN KYYON PRUITT, Appellant V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS

On Appeal from the 396th District Court Tarrant County, Texas

Trial Court No. 1767367

Before Sudderth, C.J.; Kerr and Walker, JJ. Memorandum Opinion by Chief Justice Sudderth

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Pursuant to a plea bargain, in 2023 Appellant Braylen Kyyon Pruitt pleaded guilty to a single charge of aggravated robbery, and the trial court placed him on deferred adjudication community supervision for a term of eight years. In 2025, the State filed a petition to proceed to adjudication, alleging that Pruitt had violated the terms or conditions of his community supervision in multiple ways.1 Pruitt pleaded true to all of the alleged violations. The trial court accepted Pruitt’s pleas and, after hearing evidence and argument at a “true but” hearing,2 adjudicated Pruitt guilty and sentenced him to eight years in prison.

Pruitt now appeals the trial court’s Judgment Adjudicating Guilt, arguing in one issue that his “plea of true to the motion to adjudicate him guilty of aggravated robbery was not voluntary because the trial court admonished [him], in error, that [the judge] had the option of adjudicating him guilty and keeping him on regular probation.”3 Because Pruitt has failed to make an objective showing that he was

1 The State later amended its petition. Our reference in this opinion to the “State’s petition” refers to its amended petition.

2 “A defendant who pleads ‘true[ ]but’ pleads ‘true’ to the revocation allegations but attempts to explain why he or she should remain on community supervision.” Sanders v. State, No. 02-25-00055-CR, 2025 WL 2989892, at *1 n.1 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Oct. 23, 2025, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication).

3 “Community supervision” and “probation” are synonymous and generally used interchangeably. Hongpathoum v. State, 578 S.W.3d 213, 214 n.1 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2019, no pet.); see Euler v. State, 218 S.W.3d 88, 89 n.1 (Tex. Crim. App.2007.).

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misled or harmed by the trial court’s admonishment, we will overrule his issue and affirm the trial court’s judgment.

THE “TRUE BUT” HEARING AND APPLICABLE LAW The facts of Pruitt’s underlying offense are not at issue in this appeal, and his “true” pleas, standing alone, suffice to support the revocation of his community supervision. Tapia v. State, 462 S.W.3d 29, 31 n.2 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015). Pruitt’s sole issue concerns the voluntariness of his pleas.

“A defendant’s plea of true to the violations of the conditions of his community supervision must be voluntary.” Sykes v. State, 586 S.W.3d 522, 531 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2019, pet. ref’d). To be “voluntary,” a guilty plea must be the expression of the defendant’s own free will and must not be induced by threats, misrepresentations, or improper promises. Kniatt v. State, 206 S.W.3d 657, 664 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). A plea is involuntarily induced when (1) a defendant shows that the trial court volunteered an admonishment that included information on the availability of probation, thereby creating an affirmative duty on the part of the trial judge to provide accurate information on the availability of probation; (2) a defendant shows that the trial court provided him with inaccurate information on the availability of probation, thereby leaving the defendant unaware of the consequences of his plea; and (3) a defendant makes an objective showing that he was misled or harmed by the inaccurate admonishment. Ex parte Williams, 704 S.W.2d 773, 776–77 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986). It is the third of these elements that is not satisfied here.

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While “the general rule is that there is no mandatory duty for a trial judge to admonish a defendant as to his eligibility for probation . . . a trial court may impose a duty upon itself under [Texas Code of Criminal Procedure] Article 26.13[] to admonish a defendant accurately as to the availability of probation.” Williams, 704 S.W.2d at 775.4 Put another way, “there is no mandatory duty to admonish the defendant about his probation eligibility, [but] if the trial court chooses to admonish the defendant about it, the court assumes the duty to do so accurately when it is apparent from the record that the defendant was affirmatively seeking probation.” Gutierrez v. State, No. 03-11-00657-CR, 2013 WL 4822909, at *3 (Tex. App.—Austin Aug. 30, 2013, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for publication).

At the hearing, the trial court told Pruitt,

I have three options, and however you plea[d] doesn’t really change my options. [1] I can reinstate you on the deferred adjudication. [2] I can find you guilty, call it probation instead, but still have you report, or [3] I could sentence you within the range of punishment and revoke your probation. Okay? So those are the three options.

4 We have recognized, based on subsequent precedent from the Court of Criminal Appeals, that Article 26.13 “applies only when a defendant enters a plea of guilty or nolo contendere in a felony prosecution and does not apply to pleas of true in adjudication proceedings.” Thomas v. State, No. 02-11-00055-CR, 2012 WL 254048, at *2 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Jan. 26, 2012, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication); see Gutierrez v. State, 108 S.W.3d 304, 309–10 (Tex. Crim. App. 2003). But we have also said that, “once the admonishments have been given, whether required or not, they must be given correctly.” Baggett v. State, No. 2-03-304-CR, 2004 WL 1118927, at *1 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth May 20, 2004, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication).

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Pruitt complains—and the State concedes—that the second option—which we interpret as the trial court’s stating that it could adjudicate Pruitt guilty, sentence him, and then probate his sentence—was incorrect. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 42A.054(a)(11) (prohibiting judge-ordered probation for the offense of aggravated robbery).

When the trial court adjudicates a probationer guilty, it then proceeds to impose a specific sentence and either probates that sentence or sends the defendant to prison for the specified term of years. Tapia, 462 S.W.3d at 31 n.2. But here, because the trial court was legally prohibited from probating Pruitt’s sentence if it adjudicated him guilty, its only options were to either adjudicate him guilty and sentence him to the eight years in prison or continue him on his deferred adjudication community supervision. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 42A.108(b) (providing that a defendant accused of violating a condition of his deferred adjudication community supervision “is entitled to a hearing limited to a determination by the court of whether the court will proceed with an adjudication of guilt on the original charge”). Any admonishment that it could probate his prison sentence if it adjudicated him guilty of aggravated robbery was therefore inaccurate.

WHY PRUITT’S ARGUMENT FAILS Pruitt relies upon this authority to argue that he is entitled to reversal of his conviction based upon his “involuntary” plea. But “to warrant a reversal on direct appeal, the record must support an inference that [he] did not know the consequences

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of his plea.” Burnett v. State, 88 S.W.3d 633, 638 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002). This is where Pruitt’s argument is fundamentally flawed.

Pruitt admits that whether he “relied upon the trial court’s misinformation in deciding to plead true to the allegations would be speculative on this record.” The State agrees, and so do we. As Pruitt further concedes, he “desired to have another chance at completing his community supervision,” and the fact that he “sought to be continued on probation is evident from his testimony in the record.” At the hearing, when asked if he was “asking th[e trial court] to give [him] an opportunity to stay on probation,” Pruitt testified, “Yes, sir.”5 [Emphasis added.] In his closing argument, he expressed his desire that the trial court “give[] him a chance to not be a convicted felon.”6 This record shows that, rather than “affirmatively seeking” a probated

5 Further, when given an opportunity to “tell the [j]udge what [he instead] would like for the outcome of this case to be and why [the judge] should not send [him] to prison,” Pruitt said simply, “Judge, I apologize for the mistakes I made, for using drugs while I’m not supposed to, and not attend any other program I was supposed to. I guess there -- that’s it.” He did not ask for a probated sentence.

6 We note that, later on in his closing, Pruitt argued, “In the alternative, . . . if the [trial c]ourt will not do that, then I . . . would ask the [trial c]ourt to consider either ISF, like cognitive, . . . or SAFPF.” These initializations were not defined on the record, but “ISF” is an intermediate sanction facility, White v. State, 508 S.W.3d 509, 509 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2016, no pet.), and “SAFPF” means a “Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility,” Sanders, 2025 WL 2989892, at *1. Although the ambiguity of his request makes it difficult to discern exactly what he desired, it is clear that Pruitt wanted the trial court to keep him on deferred adjudication community supervision and not adjudicate him guilty and sentence him to a prison term.

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sentence after being adjudicated guilty, Pruitt expressly desired to continue on his deferred adjudication community supervision and not be convicted on the aggravated robbery charge.

But even if the record reflected that Pruitt was expecting a probated sentence following an adjudication of his guilt, we would still have to reject his contention that “[i]t was foreseeable and reasonable that [he] would rely upon the trial court’s statement that he might be adjudicated [guilty] and [still] continued on probation” because the record unequivocally shows that Pruitt pleaded true to the allegations in the State’s petition before the trial court admonished him. At the hearing, prior to admonishing Pruitt, the trial court said to him, “I know that we met off the record in front of the clerk at the bench last week, sometime recently. We went through all of . . . the allegations in the petition to revoke, and before me on that day you pled true to everything . . . .” The clerk’s record contains documentation of this prior proceeding; it indicates that Pruitt pleaded true to all five paragraphs in the State’s petition on August 5, 2025, a week before the “true but” hearing. Pruitt has thus wholly failed to make “an objective showing that he was misled or harmed by the inaccurate admonishment.” See Williams, 704 S.W.2d at 777; see also Burns v. State, 835 S.W.2d 733, 736 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi–Edinburg 1992, pet. ref’d) (holding that, where “appellant pleaded true to all proposed probation violations before being admonished by the court, then reiterated her pleas of true afterwards[, n]o evidence support[ed] appellant’s argument that she pleaded true to seven probation violations because of the improper admonishment”). Accordingly, we overrule his one issue.

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CONCLUSION

Having overruled Pruitt’s issue, we affirm the trial court’s Judgment Adjudicating Guilt.

/s/ Bonnie Sudderth

Bonnie Sudderth

Chief Justice

Do Not Publish Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)

Delivered: August 13, 2026