Holcomb v. State

745 S.W.2d 903, 1988 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 14, 1988 WL 4302
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 27, 1988
Docket924-85
StatusPublished
Cited by49 cases

This text of 745 S.W.2d 903 (Holcomb 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
Holcomb v. State, 745 S.W.2d 903, 1988 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 14, 1988 WL 4302 (Tex. 1988).

Opinions

OPINION ON APPELLANT’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

MILLER, Judge.

Appellant was charged in a single indictment with aggravated sexual assault and aggravated robbery with the same enhancement paragraph added to each count. Appellant waived his right to a jury trial and was found guilty by the trial court of both offenses. After pleading true to the enhancement paragraphs, appellant was sentenced to thirty-five years for each of the offenses, the sentences to run concurrently.

The conviction was appealed to the First Court of Appeals on the grounds that the two offenses were improperly joined in one indictment, that the part of the indictment [905]*905alleging aggravated sexual assault was defective, and that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction for aggravated sexual assault. The court of appeals overruled all of appellant’s grounds of error and affirmed the judgment of the trial court. Appellant filed a petition for- discretionary review in this Court complaining that the court of appeals erred in upholding the convictions for both of the offenses because the offenses were misjoined in the indictment, and that the court of appeals erred in finding sufficient evidence to uphold the conviction for aggravated sexual assault. This Court granted review on the first ground only. We will affirm appellant’s conviction for aggravated sexual assault and reverse his conviction for aggravated robbery.

The testimony showed that appellant approached the victim as she was getting out of her car in the parking lot of her apartment complex, threatened her with a knife, and forced her into his truck. Appellant stopped at the end of the parking lot and made the victim give him her money and her billfold. Appellant then drove a few blocks, stopped the truck, and forced the victim to have sexual intercourse with him. Afterward, appellant drove to the end of the street and let the victim go.

We will address the joinder issue first. There are two basic rules that govern joinder of offenses in charging instruments: (1) the State may allege more than one offense in a single charging instrument if the offenses constitute the repeated commission of the same property offense under Title 7 of the Penal Code; and (2) the State may not allege more than one non-property offense in a single charging instrument regardless of the number of the transactions involved.

The first rule is stated in Art. 21.24, V.A.C.C.P.:

Two or more offenses may be joined in a single indictment, information or complaint, with each offense stated in a separate count, if the offenses arise out of the same criminal episode, as defined in Chapter 3 of the Penal Code.

Criminal episode is defined in V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 3.011 as “the repeated commission of any one offense defined in Title 7 of the code (Offenses Against Property).” These two statutes indicate that it is permissible for the State to allege the repeated commission of the same property offense in one charging instrument. Ex parte Siller, 686 S.W.2d 617 (Tex.Cr.App.1985).

The second rule comes from a narrow reading of Art. 21.24, V.A.C.C.P., and V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 3.01. These statutes have been interpreted as permitting the joinder of more than one offense in a charging instrument only when it is the repeated commission of the same property offense. Drake v. State, 686 S.W.2d 935 (Tex.Cr.App.1985). This necessarily means that a single charging instrument may not:

1) allege more than one non-property offense;
2) allege statutorily different property offenses, or;
3) allege one property and one non-property offense.

Conversely, according to Art. 21.24(b), supra, a single charging instrument may contain multiple allegations of the same offense in different paragraphs.

In order to understand why different offenses may not be joined, it is necessary to trace the history of the joinder rules. Before the principles of criminal procedure were codified, the common law mandated that only one conviction be obtained from one indictment. In 1879 Article 433 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allowed a charging instrument to contain multiple counts charging the same offense. Offense was determined to mean criminal transaction. Dill v. State, 35 Tex.Crim. 240, 33 S.W. 126 (1895).

[906]*906In 1925 the successor to the 1879 Code’s Article 433 was renumbered to 417 with no change in the substance of the statute. It should be noted that the 1895 and 1911 Codes also addressed this issue, but no substantive changes occurred. In 1965 Article 417 was combined with Article 408a to make Article 21.24. This revision added the phrase, “but may not charge more than one offense.” (emphasis added) This phrase was interpreted in Vannerson v. State, 408 S.W.2d 228 (Tex.Cr.App.1966) to mean that the State could allege more than one offense in a charging instrument if the offenses were based on the same incident, act or transaction. This was not the interpretation anticipated by the legislature, as was to become apparent in 1973.

In 1973, in response to Vannerson, supra, Art. 21.24, Y.A.C.C.P. was revised to its present form. It states that more than one offense may be joined in one charging instrument if the offenses arise from the same criminal episode. In determining the definition of criminal episode, the legislature rejected a proposal which included:

“all conduct ... incident to the attempt or accomplishment of a single criminal objective, even though the harm is directed toward or inflicted upon more than one person.”

Drake, supra at 940. This rejected definition of criminal episode would have, upon adoption, codified the holding of Vannerson and Dill, supra, since this definition is de facto a definition of a “criminal transaction”. Instead, the legislature decided on the more narrow definition found in V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 3.01 and, in doing so, rejected the transaction concept imposed on past legislation by this Court.

In 1983 this Court handed down Meeks v. State, 653 S.W.2d 6 (Tex.Cr.App.1983). Meeks, supra, held that the 1974 revision of article 21.24 did not change the previous authorization to allege more than one offense in an indictment if the offenses arose out of the same criminal transaction. The new statute merely provided an additional instance of when several offenses may be alleged. As pointed out in Drake, supra, this holding completely ignores the significance of the evolution of article 21.24. The purpose of the 1974 revision was to make clear that the Vannerson interpretation of offense was in correct. The correct holding in Meeks, supra, would have been:

When the statute says offense it doesn’t mean criminal transaction, but rather it means one statutory offense as broken down by the Penal Code (i.e. assault, murder, abuse of office, etc.).

The Meeks

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Bluebook (online)
745 S.W.2d 903, 1988 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 14, 1988 WL 4302, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/holcomb-v-state-texcrimapp-1988.