Aguilar v. State

• Decision Date: 20 January 1993
• Docket Number: No. 358-91,358-91
• Citation: 846 S.W.2d 318
• Parties: Obed Lujan AGUILAR, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 318

846 S.W.2d 318

Obed Lujan AGUILAR, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 358-91.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas En Banc.

Jan. 20, 1993.

Robert V. Garcia, Jr., Odessa, for appellant.

Tracey Brigth, City Atty., Odessa, Robert Huttash, State's Atty. and Matthew W. Paul, Asst. State's Atty., Austin, for the State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION ON STATE'S PETITIONS FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

CAMPBELL, Judge.

In January 1989, appellant Obed Lujan Aguilar was charged by information in Ector County with driving while intoxicated, conduct which is prohibited by Article 6701 l-1(b) of our state's Revised Civil Statutes. In December of that year, a jury found appellant guilty as charged and assessed his punishment at confinement in the county jail for two years and a fine of $2,000. The Eighth Court of Appeals later reversed the trial court's judgment of conviction, holding that the complaint underlying the information was void. Aguilar v. State, 810 S.W.2d 230 (Tex.App.--El Paso 1991). We granted the State's petitions for discretionary review, pursuant to Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 200(c)(2), to determine whether the court of appeals erred in holding that an appellant may raise the invalidity of a complaint underlying an information for the first time on appeal. ¹ We will reverse the judgment of the court of appeals.

The body of the complaint in question alleged that appellant engaged in the prohibited conduct on or about March 5, 1988. The jurat of the complaint stated, however, that the complaint was sworn out on January 16, 1988, a date well before the alleged offense date. Despite this temporal discrepancy in the complaint, appellant did not file a pretrial motion to quash the information, as would have been his right under Davis v. State, 503 S.W.2d 241 (Tex.Cr.App.1974) (holding that such temporal discrepancies invalidate complaints), and Article 27.03 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. ²

Appellant first complained of the discrepancy in the complaint in his brief to the court of appeals. He argued there that the discrepancy rendered the complaint "fundamentally defective" and void, and that the information was also void because it was not supported by a valid complaint. Citing Davis v. State, he argued further that the void complaint and information necessitated the reversal of his conviction and the dismissal of the prosecution.

The court of appeals accepted appellant's argument, explaining:

[The temporal] discrepancy renders the complaint invalid and vitiates the resulting information and conviction. Davis v. State, 503 S.W.2d 241 (Tex.Crim.App.1974)....

* * * * * *

The Court has also considered the impact of ... the 1985 amendments to Article V, Section 12 of the Texas Constitution and Article 1.14 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. We have concluded that these authorities do not change the result we have reached. The constitutional and statutory changes ... relate to defects in indictments or informations, i.e., "charging instruments," particularly the sufficiency of the substantive allegations they present. The present defect is in the underlying complaint, which in class A and B misdemeanors is not the charging instrument. The present defect would not appear on the charging instrument and is not subject to the provisions of Article 1.14 or Article V, Section 12 of the Texas Constitution. Nor does the present defect concern notice to the accused. It relates to the process by which the charging instrument was generated and therefore relates to the jurisdiction of the trial court in the face of a void pleading.

Aguilar v. State, 810 S.W.2d at 231-232.

In its brief to this Court, the State concedes that the complaint was invalid but argues that any jurisdictional problem created by that invalidity was cured, under Texas Constitution art. 5, § 12(b), when the information was presented to the trial court. Article 5, § 12(b), as amended in 1985, provides:

An indictment is a written instrument presented to a court by a grand jury charging a person with the commission of an offense. An information is a written instrument presented to a court by an attorney for the State charging a person with the commission of an offense. The practice and procedures relating to the use of indictments and informations, including their contents, amendments, sufficiency, and requisites, are as provided by law. The presentment of an indictment or information to a court invests the court with jurisdiction of the cause.

(Emphasis added.) Appellant counterargues that Article 5, § 12(b), is "simply inapplicable here" because it does not deal explicitly with complaints.

The court of appeals was correct in noting that this Court has held that a complaint underlying an information is invalid--and thus will not support the information--if the complaint alleges the offense was committed on a date after the date on which the complaint was sworn. See, e.g., Davis v. State, 503 S.W.2d 241; Thomas v. State, 474 S.W.2d 236 (Tex.Cr.App.1971); Hall v. State, 373 S.W.2d 252 (Tex.Cr.App.1963); Mitchell v. State, 170 Tex.Crim. 255, 340 S.W.2d 301 (App.1960); Bradshaw v. State, 156 Tex.Crim. 441, 243 S.W.2d 586 (App.1951). We have also held--sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly--that such invalid complaints and informations constitute "fundamental," "jurisdictional" error which may be raised for the first time on appeal. Davis v. State, 503 S.W.2d 241; Thomas v. State, 474 S.W.2d 236; Hall v. State, 373 S.W.2d 252; Mitchell v. State, 170 Tex.Crim. 255, 340 S.W.2d 301; Bradshaw v. State, 156 Tex.Crim. 441, 243 S.W.2d 586; Campos v. State, 139 Tex.Crim. 411, 141 S.W.2d 344 (App.1940); Stubblefield v. State, 94 Tex.Crim. 444, 252 S.W. 563 (App.1922). Thus, as the court of appeals recognized, under the holdings in these cited cases an invalid complaint necessitates the reversal of a conviction because of a lack of trial court jurisdiction over the defendant's person.

The court of appeals failed to fully appreciate, however, the fact that all these cases predated the 1985 amendment to Texas Constitution art. 5, § 12(b). ³ Now, under the explicit terms of the constitution itself, the mere presentment of an information to a trial court invests that court with jurisdiction over the person of the defendant, regardless of any defect that might exist in the underlying complaint. See State v. Hall, 829 S.W.2d 184, 188 (Tex.Cr.App.1992); Studer v. State, 799 S.W.2d 263, 269 (Tex.Cr.App.1990). Defects in complaints, such as the one here, must now be raised before trial pursuant to Article 27.03; they are no longer "jurisdictional" in the traditional sense.

Appellant has never claimed that the information in this cause was not in fact an information for the purposes of Texas Constitution art. 5, § 12(b). We must assume, therefore, the presentment of the information to the trial court invested that court with jurisdiction over appellant's person, and the court of appeals erred in holding otherwise.

The judgment of the court of appeals is REVERSED and the cause REMANDED to that court for consideration of appellant's remaining point of error.

CLINTON, Judge, dissenting.

Today the majority presents yet another "Son of Studer."

Studer v. State, 799 S.W.2d 263 (Tex.Cr.App.1990), stands for the proposition that although an "information" which fails to allege necessary matters the Legislature has duly prescribed is facially "substantively defective," nonetheless "[o]nce presented to the trial court 'by an attorney for the State' the trial court obtained jurisdiction of the cause" solely because the accused "failed to make any pre-trial objection to the substance error in the information." Id., at 273. In other words, a trial judge may hail to court, try, convict and punish a citizen on an invalid information unless at least a day before trial the citizen protests that the prosecution is about to violate the law.

Today, however, it is not that the information is facially defective in any respect. The more fundamental problem is that the underlying complaint--the sine qua non of a valid information, with good reason--is fatally defective. ^* Therefore, while proper on its face, the information is actually null and void for want of a valid predicate complaint. Shackelford v. State, 516 S.W.2d 180 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); Articles 15.04, 15.05 and 21.22, V.A.C.C.P. Thus without a proper complaint made by a credible person the assistant county attorney who signed and presented the information is in a very real sense both the accuser and the prosecutor.

For those reasons, as well as on the strength of the analysis made by the court of appeals, Aguilar v. State, 810 S.W.2d 230, at 231-232 (Tex.App.--El Paso 1991), I dissent to stretching and extending the Studer construction to excuse prosecutorial blunders and the consequential violations both of first principles in our jurisprudence and of due process and due course of law guaranteed by our Federal and State Constitutions.

BAIRD, Judge, dissenting.

I disagree with the proposition that a defective complaint has no effect on the validity of an information. We recently held:

... our state constitution assigns the lawmaking function to the Legislature while assigning the law interpreting function to the Judiciary.

Boykin v. State, 818 S.W.2d 782, 785 (Tex.Cr.App.1991) (emphasis in original). Because Texas Constitution art. 5, § 12 and Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 1.14 do not address complaints, I dissent to the legislative efforts of the majority.

I.

The facts are not in dispute. A complaint was filed charging appellant with driving while intoxicated. The complaint, executed on January 16, 1988, alleged the defendant committed this offense "on or about the 5th day of March, A.D.1988." ¹ Prior to today, such a defect was fatal and rendered the information void. In Davis v. State, 503 S.W.2d 241 (Tex.Cr.App.1974), we stated:

The date on or about which the offense was...