Martin, Ruth Ann

• Court: Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
• Decided: March 2, 2005
• Docket: PD-0498-04
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS

OF TEXAS

PD-0498-04 RUTH ANN MARTIN, Appellant

v.

THE STATE OF TEXAS

ON DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

FROM THE EIGHTH COURT OF APPEALS

DALLAS COUNTY

Per Curiam. Holcomb, J., concurred in the judgment.

The issue in this case is whether the trial court, sua sponte, should have withdrawn the appellant's plea of guilty in a trial without a jury.

Trial Court

Having been indicted for the second-degree felony of recklessly causing serious bodily injury to a child, the appellant waived trial by jury and pleaded guilty. The State introduced her written, judicial confession. The appellant testified, and she presented testimony from friends and family.

The appellant said that she was on felony probations for four controlled-substance offenses; three were deliveries, and one was possession. She also had been convicted twice for obscenity offenses. According to her testimony, she had been doing well for nine years, until early in 2001, when she "relapsed" and took some morphine.

She testified that her mother-in-law, who had suffered from cancer, had been prescribed some morphine pills. After the mother-in-law died, a sister-in-law sent the pills to the appellant's house so that her husband could try to sell them. There were "a lot" of them, maybe fifty. The appellant, her husband, and a friend each took one of them. They made the appellant and her friend sick.

The appellant's husband couldn't sell the rest of the pills, and the appellant was supposed to give them back to the sister-in-law. Instead, she put them in the medicine cabinet. They were in a bottle that the appellant said "looks like a regular aspirin bottle, I guess." Whether there was a child-proof top, she "d[id]n't know. I think it was child-proof. Just the push and turn." She didn't think the kids would get into it.

One night, the appellant and her husband went out to a bar. Their five-year-old child was left at a friend's house. The other two children stayed at home. The appellant testified that the oldest child, who "was twelve … fixing to be thirteen, … was in charge" of his younger sister, Heather. Heather's age does not appear in the record. The appellant knew that Heather had a headache. All the family suffers from migraines, "every now and then." While the appellant and her husband were at the bar, the children called them. Heather asked permission to lie in the appellant's bed.

When the appellant came home after four hours, Heather was asleep in the appellant's bed. When the appellant woke Heather up, to take her to her own bed, Heather said, "I can't walk right," and she collided with a door jamb. The appellant thought Heather was okay, and she put her in bed.

The appellant told investigators that she heard Heather vomiting during the night. At trial, she testified that she was mistaken about that, and that she just assumed that Heather had been vomiting because, the next morning, she saw vomit coming from Heather's mouth. Heather was already dead by then. The appellant agreed that "they" (persons not otherwise described, but evidently medical personnel) "found five pills -- undigested pills -- in [Heather's] stomach."

After the appellant heard that detectives were coming to the house, her husband "flushed" the pills.

There was no agreement between the State and the appellant about punishment.

The court found the appellant guilty and assessed punishment of twenty years' imprisonment. The appellant gave notice of appeal.

Court of Appeals

The appellant's first point of error, "The trial court abused its discretion in not rejecting the appellant's plea of guilty," was sustained by a divided panel of the Eighth Court of Appeals. ⁽¹⁾ The court said, "In light of the record as a whole, we believe that the evidence reasonably and fairly raised the issue whether appellant consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk." ⁽²⁾

The court recognized our holding in the leading case, Moon v. State, ⁽³⁾ that when a defendant waives trial by a jury and enters a plea of guilty, the introduction of evidence that is inconsistent with guilt does not require a court, sua sponte, to withdraw the plea of guilty and enter a plea of not guilty. ⁽⁴⁾ The court distinguished Moon:

Notably, in Moon there is no mention of a plea agreement and the cause was tried to the court. See Moon, 572 S.W.2d at 682. The case sub judice is inapposite because this is not a trial to the bench. Rather, we are presented with a plea bargain agreement. ⁽⁵⁾

…

If we believed Moon were applicable, our inquiry would end. See Moon, 572 S.W.2d at 682 (negating the rule requiring sua sponte withdrawal of a guilty plea after evidence of innocence in a non-jury trial). In Moon, however, there is no mention of a plea agreement. Id. And, as we noted, the State argues that the trial court was without jurisdiction to withdraw appellant's plea. …

… The State argues that after approving a plea bargain agreement, the lower court cannot withdraw the guilty plea. ⁽⁶⁾

The court held, "We can only conclude that appellant's contract with the State to plead guilty, when the record evidence reasonably and fairly raised issues of innocence, was void as against public policy. See Griffin [v. State], 703 S.W.2d [193 (Tex. Cr. App. 1986),] at 195." ⁽⁷⁾ This holding was based on principles of contract law, under which courts hold that contracts that are against public policy are void, ⁽⁸⁾ and constitutional principles of due process of law ⁽⁹⁾ and due course of the law of the land ⁽¹⁰⁾ which require a conviction to be entered only on a showing of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The State's motion for rehearing was denied. We granted review.

Discussion

We begin by clearing up some terminology. This case may not be distinguished from Moon on the basis that there was no plea-bargain agreement in Moon, and there was a plea-bargain agreement in this case. There was no plea-bargain agreement in this case.

The parties and the trial court did sign a printed form, styled "Plea Agreement." In one part of it, the parties may enter an agreement as to punishment, but there was none in this case. It was specified that this would be an "Open plea." The rest of the form's two, legal-size pages of close printing comprised the court's admonitions to the defendant on the range of punishment, recitations of the defendant's procedural rights, the parties' waivers of rights and consents to stipulation of evidence, the defendant's statements of understanding of rights, the defendant's plea of guilty, and the court's finding that these acts were voluntary and its approval of them.

In its brief, the State referred to this document as "the open plea bargain," ⁽¹¹⁾ and an "open plea bargain agreement." ⁽¹²⁾ This is another odd choice of language. Some pleas of guilty are "open pleas," in which there are no agreed recommendations of punishment from the State. In other pleas of guilty, the State and the defendant have made "plea-bargain" agreements for recommendations of punishment. But an "open plea bargain agreement" would mean an agreement not to agree. The unusual language in the plea form and the State's brief may have led the court of appeals to believe that there was a plea-bargain agreement in this case that made it different from the Moon case. There was not, as the appellant acknowledges in her brief in this court. ⁽¹³⁾

The more important point is that the holding of Moon is not affected by the presence or absence of a plea bargain. This court's decision in Moon was based on the act of the legislature that, in 1966, authorized the trial of a felony case without a jury on a plea of not guilty. ⁽¹⁴⁾ Before that act, if it became apparent during a plea of guilty without a jury that the evidence required the entry of a plea of not guilty, "the court was required to impanel a jury to hear the not guilty plea." ⁽¹⁵⁾ In effect, the court had to declare a mistrial during the trial on the guilty plea. After the act, the court could simply continue the trial and enter the judgment that the law and the facts required -- "to consider the evidence submitted and as the trier of facts the court may find the appellant guilty of a lesser offense … or it may find the defendant not guilty. It would serve no purpose to withdraw the plea of guilty and enter a not guilty plea." ⁽¹⁶⁾

This procedural change of the 1966 law obtains in plea-bargained and non-plea-bargained cases alike, when they are tried without a jury.

Insofar as the court of appeals' opinion may be read to suggest that due process of law or due course of the law of the land has been denied by a conviction in a trial on a plea of guilty in which there was some evidence that was inconsistent with guilt, this would be incorrect. The due-process requirement for a judgment of guilt is satisfied by the knowing and voluntary plea of guilty alone. ⁽¹⁷⁾

Texas' requirement, for further evidence of guilt when a plea of guilty is made in a felony trial without a jury, is one of statute. ⁽¹⁸⁾ An amendment to the statute that became effective in 1966 allowed the parties to stipulate the evidence. ⁽¹⁹⁾ A defendant's judicial confession also is sufficient evidence. ⁽²⁰⁾

In this case, the appellant does not contend that her plea of guilty and her judicial confession were not knowing and voluntary. Her claim is that the law requires a court to change her plea from guilty to not guilty when evidence inconsistent with guilt is introduced. It does not.

The appellant could have argued to the trial court that she should be found not guilty on the basis of her testimony, rather than guilty on the basis of her plea of guilty and her judicial confession of guilt. She certainly could have withdrawn her plea of guilty. She did neither. In her brief to the court of appeals is a point that raises the issue whether she was denied effective assistance of counsel when her lawyer failed to take such actions. We express no opinion on this issue. We are called on today only to hold that the trial court did not err in failing to change the appellant's plea from guilty to not guilty.

Judgment

The judgment of the Eighth Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for consideration of the appellant's other points of error.

En banc.

Delivered March 2, 2005.

Do Not Publish.

1.

Martin v. State, No. 08-02-00144-CR, 2004 Tex. App. LEXIS 434 (Tex. App. -- El Paso, January 15, 2004) (not designated for publication).

2.

Id., at 9.

3.

572 S.W.2d 681 (Tex. Cr. App. 1978).

4.

Id., at 682.

5.

Op., at 6.

6.

Id., at 10-11.

7.

Id., at 14.

8.

Id., at 12-13.

9.

Id., at 5.

10.

Id., at 13-14.

11.

State's Brief in Court of Appeals, at 1.

12.

Id., at 4, 8, 10.

13.

"[T]he present case … was … an 'open plea,' not a plea bargain." Brief, at 7.

14.

Code of Criminal Procedure Act, 59th Leg., R.S., ch. 722, § 1, art. 1.15, 1965 Tex. Gen. Laws vol.2, p. 317, 322.

15.

Moon, 572 S.W.2d, at 682.

16.

Ibid. Accord, Aldrich v. State, 104 S.W.3d 890, 893 (Tex. Cr. App. 2003).

17.

See North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970); Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238 (1969); Ex parte Williams, 703 S.W.2d 674, 682 (Tex. Cr. App. 1986).

18.

See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 1.15.

19.

Code of Criminal Procedure Act, supra n.14, at 322. See generally Rodriguez v. State, 442 S.W.2d 376, 379 (Tex. Cr. App. 1969) (opinion of Onion, J.).

20.

See Dinnery v. State, 592 S.W.2d 343 (Tex. Cr. App. 1980).