Ex Parte Williams

619 S.W.2d 180, 1981 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1128
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedJuly 22, 1981
Docket68201
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 619 S.W.2d 180 (Ex Parte Williams) 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
Ex Parte Williams, 619 S.W.2d 180, 1981 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1128 (Tex. 1981).

Opinion

OPINION

CLINTON, Judge.

This is an appeal from certain rulings made by a district court judge after hearing a postindictment but pretrial petition for writ of habeas corpus that sought discharge from what was alleged to be illegal confinement and restraint by the Sheriff of Travis County “by virtue of an unreasonably high bond.” We first sketch a factual background to the issues appellant would have us consider.

Learning from a telephone conversation with his wife that Travis County deputy sheriffs had executed a search warrant for his residence and seized a sizeable amount of photographic equipment, photographs, videotapes during the evening of June 4, 1981, appellant returned from Corpus Christi during the following early morning hours and made arrangements to surrender to a deputy sheriff on what he understood was a charge of child pornography. He was taken before a magistrate on what turned out to be a complaint charging sexual abuse of a child; informed that bail was set at $50,000 and that release on personal bond would not be considered because of the likelihood that additional charges were in the offing, appellant submitted to incarceration.

The following Monday, June 8, the same magistrate reduced bail to $10,000 and al *181 lowed release on a personal bond. In the evening, however, one of the investigating deputies called on appellant and produced a second warrant for an additional charge, setting bail on it at $50,000. Surrender on that one was deferred until the following afternoon, and appellant presented himself with packed belongings for a long tenure in jail “because I had a feeling I was going to have to stay.” The charge this time was rape of a child, and bail was set on the complaint at $50,000. But during the afternoon of what is now June 9, a different magistrate reduced bail to $15,000 and approved a personal bond in that amount.

Appellant was not released, however, since in the meantime the first complaint of sexual abuse of a child was converted into an indictment and returned at about 3:21 p. m. in District Court Number 63,175. In the upper right hand corner in the space for amount of bond someone typed in $100,000. The record does not show by what authority that amount appears on the face of the indictment. In his petition for writ of ha-beas corpus appellant alleges, “The order setting the bond has not been located,” nor, we add, has one made its way into the record before us. In the event, apparently the Travis County Sheriff honored whatever paper was thought to require a $100,000 bond, rather than the earlier magistrate’s order that effectuated appellant’s June 8 release on $10,000 personal bond. 1

The following day, June 10, attorney for appellant filed the petition for habeas corpus relief from the “unreasonably high bond” in Cause Number 63,175, and the habeas judge ordered a hearing for June 12. In the interim, however, the grand jury returned an indictment in the rape of a child case, showing amount of bond at $100,000, that became Cause Number 63,250 in the district court. By agreement and approval the petition was orally amended to embrace the latter cause as well.

During the course of the hearing the parties entered into certain stipulations, the State presented one of the Sheriff’s deputies who had been investigating the matters and who had sworn to the affidavit for, and assisted in executing, the search warrant and through whom the State offered the two indictments, his affidavit, the warrant and its return and, though we have not viewed it, a video'cassette depicting appellant in the acts that gave rise to the charge and indictment against him; the appellant offered the personal bond papers we have alluded to and himself testified to personal biographical and financial information germane to the usual issues before a court or magistrate undertaking to apply rules for fixing amount of bail, delineated in Article 17.15, V.A.C.C.P. After hearing argument, the judge of the habeas court ruled in the pertinent part:

“The bond in each case will be reduced to $75,000 bond. A personal bond will be denied. I think that’s in conformity with the seriousness of the offense and also in conformity with the ability of the defendant to make bond. * * * ”

The court did not touch on the amount of bail vis-a-vis its giving “reasonable assurance that the undertaking will be complied with,” and we may surmise that its requirements were thought not to make the amount of bail “an instrument of oppression.” See Article 17.15, rules 1 and 2.

Appellant presents two grounds of error: First, he asserts error “in revoking the . . . personal bond in each case without a showing of good cause,” drawing that, of course, from the language of Article 17.031(a), V.A. C.C.P.; 2 second, he contends that the trial court erred in setting bail at “an excessively *182 high level.” For its part, the State suggests that appellant’s construction of Article 17.031 “would effectively repeal Article 17.21 and 23.12, V.A.C.C.P.,” and argues that they are “in pari materia” and can and should be harmonized; as to the amounts fixed by the habeas court, the State points to circumstances, especially the acts of appellant with minor children recorded on the video cassette, which it sees as justifying the ruling of the court.

Ex parte Johnston, 533 S.W.2d 349, 351 (Tex.Cr.App.1976) teaches that with enactment of Article 17.09, V.A.C.C.P., “The return of the indictment no longer automatically requires a new setting of bail and new posting of bond.” See also Hokr v. State, 545 S.W.2d 463, 465 (Tex.Cr.App. 1977). Similarly, since “bail” includes the security given by an accused in the form of a personal bond, Article 17.01, V.A.C.C.P., the provisions of Article 17.031(a), supra, coupled with Article 17.09, § 2, 3 supra, dictate that a valid personal bond posted after complaint charging a penal offense survives an indictment alleging the same offense unless one of the “subsequent courts” revokes the personal bond “for good cause shown,” Article 17.031(a), supra, orders the accused to be rearrested and requires him to give another bond, Article 17.09, § 3, supra. In the case of a bail bond Ex parte Coker, 167 Tex.Cr.R. 208, 319 S.W.2d 120 (1959) is dispositive of the proposition that an accused is entitled to remain at liberty under the bond entered into before the magistrate— “[i]n the absence of an order for [his] arrest. ..” — and has been so regarded: Surety Insurance Company v. State, 500 S.W.2d 119, 121 (Tex.Cr.App. 1973) and Villasana v. State, 411 S.W.2d 736, 738 (Tex.Cr.App.1967). Finding no reason why the “Coker” rule is not likewise applicable to an extant personal bond,

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619 S.W.2d 180, 1981 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1128, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ex-parte-williams-texcrimapp-1981.