State v. Wooldridge

237 S.W.3d 714, 2007 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1478, 2007 WL 3173287
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedOctober 31, 2007
DocketPD-1482-05
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 237 S.W.3d 714 (State v. Wooldridge) 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
State v. Wooldridge, 237 S.W.3d 714, 2007 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1478, 2007 WL 3173287 (Tex. 2007).

Opinions

WOMACK, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court,

in which KELLER, P.J., and PRICE, JOHNSON, KEASLER, HERVEY, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

The issue in this case is whether the Double Jeopardy Clause would be violated by remanding this case to the trial court for a new hearing on sentencing. We hold that it would not.

A jury found the appellee guilty of an offense of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon which he committed on March 2, 2002. The appellee had not taken any step to have the jury assess his punishment, so the question of punishment was for the trial judge.1

The offense was a felony of the second degree,2 for which the punishment is imprisonment for not less than two years or more than twenty years.3 But the indictment also alleged that the appellee was an habitual felony offender — that before he committed the aggravated assault, he had been convicted twice previously of felonies, and that he had committed the second of those offenses after the conviction for the first offense had become final. This would increase the range of punishment to imprisonment for not less than twenty-five years or more than ninety-nine years or life.4

[716]*716Each of the prior convictions was for theft of property worth at least $750 but less than $20,000. The appellee committed the first offense in 1990 and the other in 1992. At those times, such thefts were felonies of the third degree.5

If such offenses had been committed after September 1, 1994, they could not have been used to enhance the punishment for the offense in this case, because they would not have been classified as felonies of the third degree.

September 1,1994 was the effective date of a re-enactment of the Penal Code that added a new punishment classification: the state-jail felony, the punishments for which were lower than the previous degrees of felony. Thefts of property worth at least $1,500 but less than $20,000, which had been felonies of the third degree, became classified as state-jail felonies.6 Thefts of property worth at least $500 but less than $1,500, some of which had been felonies of the third degree, became Class A misdemeanors.7

Therefore, the appellee’s thefts, had they been committed on or after September 1, 1994, would have been either state-jail felonies or Class A misdemeanors. Under the 1994 penalty provisions, previous convictions for most state-jail felonies could not be used to enhance the punishment for a felony offense,8 nor could convictions for misdemeanors.

As it happened, though, the appellee had not been convicted under the 1994 Code. His offenses were felonies of the third degree, which may be used to enhance the punishment of subsequent offenses.

The trial judge accepted the evidence that the appellee had been ■ convicted of third-degree-felony thefts in 1990 and 1992 as the indictment alleged, but he ordered the State to brief the legal issue of theft offenses having been reclassified as state-jail felonies after the appellee was convicted.

After the briefing, the judge ruled:

The two prior felony convictions at the time of convictions were third-degree felonies, but the law has now changed to make those state jail felonies.
The State has provided me some cases prior to the enactment of the present statute that provides that state jail felonies cannot be used for enhancement purposes.
It’s my belief that the law is, with the intent of the legislature, that these lesser included offenses [sic ] should not be used to enhance the minimum to 25 years. Therefore, I am going to find that and assess your punishment at seven years confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The State appealed.

The Court of Appeals agreed with the State’s argument that the law permitted the use of the prior convictions to enhance the appellee’s range of punishment to that of an habitual felony offender. Its opinion said:

The trial court was mistaken in finding that the prior convictions could not be [717]*717considered for enhancement purposes. The alleged convictions were for offenses that were third degree felonies when they were committed. Therefore, the prior convictions could appropriately be used as felony enhancements under Section 12.42(d). Castaneda v. State, 135 S.W.3d 719, 724 (Tex.App.-Dallas 2003, no pet’n).9

We agree with that holding.

But the Court of Appeals went on to say that “the trial court’s mistaken legal ruling does not affect the outcome of this appeal.”10 It held:

In this case, without findings of “true” to the enhancement allegations at the punishment hearing, the trial court’s seven-year sentence of appellant was valid and authorized. The sentence was within the statutory range of punishment for second degree felonies. Under the principles of Harris [v. State, 153 S.W.3d 394 (Tex.Cr.App.2005)], an attempt to re-sentence appellee as a habitual offender would be invalid and unconstitutional.
The fact that the trial court made a mistaken legal ruling in finding that the prior convictions could not be used for enhancement purposes does not change the result of this appeal. The Harris court explained that incorrect or mistaken legal rulings that lead to a sentence raise a double jeopardy bar to a greater sentence. Harris v. State, supra at 402, n. 9.11

We do not agree with that reading of Harris.

Like the appellee, Harris was found guilty of a felony of the third degree. Like the appellee, Harris was alleged to be an habitual felony offender because of previous felony convictions. The trial court did not enter a finding that the allegations were true, and the court sentenced Harris to ten years in prison, which is within the statutory range for a third-degree felony but below the minimum for an habitual offender. “The next day, the trial judge recalled [Harris], He explained that the State had previously submitted evidence of prior felony convictions for enhancement purposes, and that he found them to be true. Thus, according to Texas Penal Code, Section 12.42(d), the court was not able to sentence Appellant to any amount of time less than twenty-five years. The trial court then re-sentenced Appellant to 25 years in the TDCJ Institutional Division.” 12

We said:

[T]he facts do not support the contention that [Harris’s] sentence was statutorily unauthorized at the time it was pronounced. When [Harris] wás sentenced, the trial court did not specifically find the enhancements to be true on the record. The court then sentenced [Harris] within the range of punishment for an un-enhanced offense.

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Bluebook (online)
237 S.W.3d 714, 2007 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1478, 2007 WL 3173287, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-wooldridge-texcrimapp-2007.