Matter of DM

611 S.W.2d 880, 1980 Tex. App. LEXIS 4304
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 31, 1980
Docket9210
StatusPublished

This text of 611 S.W.2d 880 (Matter of DM) 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
Matter of DM, 611 S.W.2d 880, 1980 Tex. App. LEXIS 4304 (Tex. Ct. App. 1980).

Opinion

611 S.W.2d 880 (1980)

In the Matter of D. M.

No. 9210.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas, Amarillo.

December 31, 1980.

*882 McGowan & McGowan, P. C., Bradford L. Moore, Brownfield, for appellant.

G. Dwayne Pruitt, Brownfield, for appellee.

REYNOLDS, Chief Justice.

Eighteen year old D. M. appeals from an order of the juvenile court of Terry County waiving its exclusive original jurisdiction and transferring him to the district court for criminal proceedings. D. M. contends the order is (1) barred by his constitutional protection for prior jeopardy, (2) void for lack of juvenile court jurisdiction, and violative of both (3) his constitutional right to a speedy trial and (4) the statutory guarantees afforded him by the Texas Family Code. Measured against the record, none of the contentions are developed to the status of reversible error. Affirmed.

The appellate record, albeit lacking preciseness in some details, suffices to record these facts: On 6 October 1978, D. M.'s father escorted him to the sheriff's office in Terry County. There, D. M., after receiving the "Miranda" warning from a judge, completed his handwritten statement containing an admission that he had twice shot the deceased, identified as Jose Sanchez, some four months previously in Terry County.[1] D. M. was arrested. Giving his age as seventeen, D. M. was treated as an adult and indicted for the murder of Sanchez. D. M. remained in jail for 101 days until he, represented by counsel, was released on bond. In July of 1979, nine months after his arrest, D. M. was adjudged guilty of murder by a Terry County district court jury. While the jury was deliberating on punishment, D. M.'s counsel, who had represented D. M. in all proceedings and to whom D. M. repeatedly told he was seventeen at the time of the alleged offense, moved for abatement of the criminal proceedings on the ground the court lacked jurisdiction because D. M., as shown by a birth certificate then revealed to counsel and introduced in evidence, was only sixteen on the date of the offense for which D. M. had been found guilty. The birth certificate carried D. M.'s date of birth as 2 October 1961. The motion was granted.

Thereafter on 13 August 1979, the State filed its petition with the juvenile court of Terry County, seeking to have D. M., then seventeen years of age, adjudged a delinquent for the conduct giving rise to the prior criminal proceedings. By agreement of the parties, a hearing date of 8 November 1979 was set. On 6 November 1979, the State filed its petition for waiver of jurisdiction and discretionary transfer to the criminal court for proceedings on the same offense. On that date summons was served on both D. M. and his father.

Following a bench trial on 8 November 1979, the court signed an order waiving its exclusive original jurisdiction and transferring D. M. to the district court for criminal proceedings. From that order, D. M. brings this appeal on contentions which are topically segregated for consideration.

*883 1. Double Jeopardy

Initially, D. M. contends that the transfer order is barred by his constitutional protection for prior jeopardy. U.S.Const. Amend. V, XIV;[2] Tex.Const. art. I, § 14.[3] Specifically, D. M. submits that constitutional jeopardy attached when, as announced in McElwee v. State, 589 S.W.2d 455 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), the jury, which found him guilty of murder, was impaneled and sworn in the district court and, thus, the transfer order placed him in jeopardy for a second time. D. M.'s position is untenable for two reasons.

First, D. M. was not put in jeopardy at the Terry County district court trial, because that court had no jurisdiction over the prior proceedings. Although McElwee v. State, supra, does prescribe that jeopardy attaches when the jury is impaneled and sworn, the precept becomes operative only when, as in McElwee, the court has jurisdiction of the proceedings, for if the court has no jurisdiction, all proceedings are absolutely void and, therefore, no bar to subsequent proceedings in a court which has jurisdiction. Ball v. United States, 163 U.S. 662, 669, 16 S.Ct. 1192, 1194, 41 L.Ed. 300 (1896).

By his evidence, D. M. was sixteen years of age at the time of the offense charged by indictment in the district court. The juvenile court, not the district court, was vested with exclusive original jurisdiction of the proceedings. Tex.Fam.Code Ann. § 51.04 (Vernon Supp.1980).[4] The juvenile court jurisdiction may be waived, Section 54.02 (Vernon 1975; Vernon Supp.1980), but it is undisputed that the juvenile court had not waived its jurisdiction at the time of the district court proceedings. Therefore, at all times from the indictment through the abortive trial, the Terry County district court did not have jurisdiction. Section 51.08 (Vernon 1975); Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 8.07(b) (Vernon Supp.1980-81); Bannister v. State, 552 S.W.2d 124, 129-30 (Tex.Cr. App.1977). Hence, jurisdiction of the court to try the prior case being an essential prerequisite where jeopardy is pleaded, McAfee v. State, 363 S.W.2d 941 (Tex.Cr. App.1963), it follows that D. M. was not put in jeopardy at the prior district court proceedings.[5]

Second, jeopardy is not present in proceedings that are not "essentially criminal." Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 528, 95 S.Ct. 1779, 1785, 44 L.Ed.2d 346 (1975). Here, the juvenile court proceeding was not an adjudicatory hearing to determine whether D. M. committed the act on which the State predicated its motion; instead, the hearing was to determine whether D. M. should be subjected to the juvenile court system or should be transferred to the adult court for criminal proceedings. Resultingly, jeopardy was not present in the juvenile court hearing and, a fortiori, the transfer order *884 itself did not place D. M. in jeopardy. See Breed v. Jones, supra.[6]

2. Juvenile Court Jurisdiction

D. M. has lodged a two-prong challenge to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court to proceed as it did in this matter. Under this record, neither challenge is tenable.

At the outset, D. M. asserts that because he became eighteen years of age after the State invoked the court's jurisdiction to adjudge him a delinquent and before the State moved, and the court granted, a waiver of exclusive original jurisdiction and transfer to the criminal court, the juvenile court only had jurisdiction to adjudge him a delinquent. D. M. relies on Sections 51.02 and 54.02 as originally enacted;[7] but whatever force those sections might lend to D. M.'s assertion is academic in the face of the 1975 amendments to the Texas Family Code, which included new provisions authorizing the juvenile court's action in D. M.'s situation.

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Related

United States v. Ball
163 U.S. 662 (Supreme Court, 1896)
Benton v. Maryland
395 U.S. 784 (Supreme Court, 1969)
Barker v. Wingo
407 U.S. 514 (Supreme Court, 1972)
Breed v. Jones
421 U.S. 519 (Supreme Court, 1975)
McCarty v. State
498 S.W.2d 212 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1973)
McElwee v. State
589 S.W.2d 455 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1979)
McAfee v. State
363 S.W.2d 941 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1963)
M. v. State
520 S.W.2d 878 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1975)
Grayless v. State
567 S.W.2d 216 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1978)
Bannister v. State
552 S.W.2d 124 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 1977)
J. T., in Re
526 S.W.2d 646 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1975)
In re J. R. C.
551 S.W.2d 748 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1977)
R . E. M. v. State
569 S.W.2d 613 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1978)
In re D. M.
611 S.W.2d 880 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1980)

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Bluebook (online)
611 S.W.2d 880, 1980 Tex. App. LEXIS 4304, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/matter-of-dm-texapp-1980.