Laney v. State

223 S.W.3d 656, 2007 Tex. App. LEXIS 2761, 2007 WL 1064325
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedApril 11, 2007
Docket12-06-00170-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 223 S.W.3d 656 (Laney v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Laney v. State, 223 S.W.3d 656, 2007 Tex. App. LEXIS 2761, 2007 WL 1064325 (Tex. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion

OPINION

JAMES T. WORTHEN, Chief Justice.

Deanna Laney was committed to the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation for inpatient care after she was found not guilty by reason of insanity of capital murder. She appeals from the trial court’s order that the Department may not grant her passes to leave the facility. In four issues, Appellant argues that the Department is given statutory authority to grant passes, that the trial court’s order violates the separation of powers and due course of law provisions of the Texas Constitution, and that the evidence is insufficient to support the order. We affirm.

Background

In 2003, Appellant killed two of her children and seriously injured another. She was indicted for capital murder, and a jury trial was held in 2004. The jury found Appellant not guilty by reason of insanity. Following the verdict, the trial court retained jurisdiction over Appellant and held a hearing on the matter of Appellant’s commitment to the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation (Department). The trial court found that Appellant had committed acts that involved serious bodily injury and that she met the criteria for commitment. Accordingly, the trial court ordered that Appellant be committed to a maximum security facility operated by the Department. Later, and in accordance with state law, Appellant was transferred to a less restrictive facility. As required by law, the trial *659 court reviewed the commitment annually and recommitted Appellant in July 2004, July 2005, and July 2006. 1

After the July 2005 recommitment, the State learned that the Department had granted Appellant passes to leave the grounds of the facility, including passes that allowed her to go shopping with her parents on brief excursions that were not supervised by hospital staff. 2 The State filed a motion asking the trial court to hold a hearing on the propriety of the passes. The trial court held a two day hearing and concluded that state law did not allow the Department to grant passes to Appellant. The trial court issued a written clarification order in May 2006 memorializing that ruling. Appellant appeals from this order. 3

Jurisdiction

Although not raised by the parties, it is incumbent on us to determine whether we have jurisdiction of this appeal. See Campbell v. State, 85 S.W.3d 176, 180 (Tex.2002). Two jurisdictional questions are presented. The first is whether this appeal is moot because the 2005 commitment order, which the trial court clarified, has expired by its own terms and been replaced with a subsequent order that does not contain the same clarification. The second, which Appellant addresses in her second issue, is whether the trial court had jurisdiction to construe the relevant statutes.

This Court’s Jurisdiction

Under Article V, Section 8 of the Texas Constitution, the “judicial power does not embrace the giving of advisory opinions.” General Land Office v. OXY U.S.A, Inc., 789 S.W.2d 569, 570 (Tex.1990). Commonly called the mootness doctrine, an appeal is moot, and we must dismiss it, if no case or controversy continues to exist. Id. at 570-71.

*660 The clarification order is no longer in effect, strictly speaking, because it clarified the 2005 commitment order and that commitment order has expired. There is an exception to the mootness doctrine for judicial actions, like commitment orders, that impose a collateral consequence that persists beyond the order itself. See Johnstone v. State, 22 S.W.3d 408, 409 n. 1 (Tex.2000) (per curiam). But the trial court’s clarification order, like a commitment following an acquittal for reason of insanity, imposes no collateral consequence. See Jones v. United States, 463 U.S. 354, 367 n. 16, 103 S.Ct. 3043, 3051 n. 16, 77 L.Ed.2d 694 (1983) (“A criminal defendant who successfully raises the insanity defense necessarily is stigmatized by the verdict itself, and thus the commitment causes little additional harm in this respect.”). There is also an exception to the mootness doctrine for questions that are “capable of repetition yet evading review.” See State v. Lodge, 608 S.W.2d 910, 912 (Tex.1980). This case has been expeditiously heard and briefed, both at the trial court and on appeal, but briefing in this matter had not been completed when the July 2006 commitment order was entered. However, even if the clarification order came too close in time to the annual recommitment hearing to allow for appellate review, Appellant still could have appealed the July 2006 commitment order. Disposition of that appeal could have been expedited. Therefore, this issue is not so time sensitive that it would continually evade review.

We conclude, however, that this matter is not moot for the same reason that Appellant did not appeal from the July 2006 order. The Department’s lawyer testified that the Department would follow the decision made by the trial court on this question, and the Department agreed prior to the hearing to refrain from issuing additional passes until the trial court ruled. We accept this to mean that the Department will continue to construe the statute as the trial court ordered. Therefore, a live controversy exists, and we have jurisdiction, because the trial court’s construction of the statute continues to control this aspect of Appellant’s commitment.

The Trial Court’s Jurisdiction

With respect to the jurisdiction of the trial court, there is a conflict, Appellant asserts, between the jurisdiction of the trial court and the Department, an administrative agency. The Department had construed the relevant statutes to allow off campus passes and by extension, furloughs, to patients such as Appellant who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed pursuant to Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, article 46.03. 4 The trial court held a hearing on the matter and concluded, as a matter of law, that the statute did not allow the Department to grant passes to Appellant, an Article 46.03 acquittee.

Appellant argues that the trial court’s order inappropriately encroaches on an area in which the Department exercises discretionary authority. We think it is *661 something less than that, however. Appellant is correct that the Texas Constitution provides that one branch of government may not exercise the functions “properly attached to either one of the others” and that the Mental Health Code gives the Department the authority to authorize passes for certain committed persons. See Tex. Const, art. II, § 1; Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann.

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Bluebook (online)
223 S.W.3d 656, 2007 Tex. App. LEXIS 2761, 2007 WL 1064325, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/laney-v-state-texapp-2007.