Carroll v. State

• Decision Date: 02 April 2003
• Docket Number: No. 0919-02.,0919-02.
• Citation: 101 S.W.3d 454
• Parties: Timothy Earl CARROLL, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

101 S.W.3d 454

Timothy Earl CARROLL, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. 0919-02.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

April 2, 2003.

Tim Brown, Livingston, for appellant.

Jeffrey L. Van Horn, Assist. St. Att., Matthew Paul, State's Attorney, Austin, for state.

OPINION

COCHRAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which KELLER, P.J., MEYERS, PRICE, WOMACK, JOHNSON, HERVEY and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.

We granted review to determine whether it is within the court of appeals' scope of review on remand to reconsider a particular point of error and decide it based on grounds not expressly contemplated by this Court's remand order.¹ We find that it is and thus affirm the judgment of the court of appeals in this case.

I.

A jury convicted appellant, Timothy Earl Carroll, of the offense of aggravated robbery, and, finding the two enhancement paragraphs to be true, sentenced him to 40 years imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — Institutional Division. In his sole point of error on appeal, appellant claimed that the trial court erred in denying his challenge for cause of a venireman.² Originally, the Beaumont Court of Appeals held that the trial court reversibly erred in failing to sustain appellant's challenge for cause and remanded the case for a new trial.³ The State requested discretionary review of the court of appeals' holding, arguing that the court of appeals had not conducted a proper harm analysis. We granted review on that issue, and in an unpublished per curiam opinion, agreed that the court of appeals failed to perform the appropriate harm analysis.⁴ Thus, we remanded the case "for consideration in light of Johnson [v. State]."⁵

On remand, a majority of the court of appeals found that, "with the clarification that Johnson provides comes the need to revisit the initial inquiry regarding whether the trial court committed error in the first place."⁶ The court did not conduct the harm analysis set out in Johnson as specified in the remand order. Instead, it reconsidered its original holding that the trial court erred in denying appellant's challenge for cause.⁷ After a thorough analysis on remand, the court of appeals concluded that the venireman in question was, in fact, not subject to a challenge for cause.⁸ Because the court found that no error had occurred, it was therefore unnecessary to conduct a harm analysis. We again granted discretionary review, this time to determine whether the appeals court impermissibly exceeded the scope of its review on remand by reconsidering the relevant point of error on a basis other than that explicitly set out in the remand order.

The courts of appeals have constitutional and statutory jurisdiction to decide non-capital criminal cases on direct appeal.⁹ "Once jurisdiction of an appellate court is invoked, exercise of its reviewing functions is limited only by its own discretion or a valid restrictive statute."¹⁰ The Legislature has authorized the Court of Criminal Appeals to promulgate the rules of appellate procedure in criminal cases.¹¹ The Rules of Appellate Procedure, however, do not specifically address the scope of an intermediate appellate court's review following a remand from this Court. Furthermore, our previous cases on the scope of appellate review after remand have been inconsistent.

An issue concerning the scope of the intermediate appellate court's review on remand might arise for a number of different reasons.¹² However, the question before us today is simply whether it is within the scope of an intermediate court of appeals' authority, after a remand from this Court, to reanalyze the relevant point of error based on grounds not required by the remand order, but not foreclosed by it either. We hold that it is.

Our discussion today resolves the apparent conflict between our holdings in Adkins v. State¹³ and Williams v. State.¹⁴ In both Adkins and Williams, the courts of appeals, after remand from this Court, addressed the precise legal issue they were instructed to consider on remand and then resolved the particular point of error on grounds not originally asserted by either of the parties.

In Adkins, the court of appeals initially reversed the defendant's conviction, stating that the trial court erred in failing to suppress evidence seized as a result of an invalid warrant.¹⁵ We vacated the judgment and remanded to the court of appeals for it to determine whether exigent circumstances existed to support a warrantless arrest.¹⁶ On remand, the court of appeals determined that no exigent circumstances existed, but nevertheless upheld the arrest on another basis, specifically, that it was a lawful warrantless arrest for an offense committed within view of a peace officer under article 14.01.¹⁷ The validity of the arrest under article 14.01 was neither suggested by this Court nor argued by either of the parties. Nevertheless, we affirmed, holding that it was within the court of appeals' authority to review the warrantless arrest in light of the "offense within view" of a peace officer exception to the warrant requirement found in article 14.01.¹⁸

The first time Adkins was before our Court, we reasoned that when a warrant is found to be deficient, "the search should be treated as one proceeding without a warrant and the facts of the case should be reviewed to determine whether the search can be upheld under a warrant exception."¹⁹ On our second review, this Court noted that our instruction on remand "did not specifically limit the Court of Appeals's review to any particular section of Chapter 14 of the Code of Criminal Procedure."²⁰ We stated that when a case is remanded to a lower appellate court, the constitutional and statutory jurisdiction originally granted to the court, is fully restored by the order of the remand.²¹ We further explained:

For this Court to issue an "order of remand" to restrict the court of appeals in renewed exercise of its own jurisdiction, power and authority would seem to be an impossible and unwarranted abridgement of constitutional grant of same to courts of appeals by Article V, § 6, Constitution of Texas, as implemented by Articles 4.03, 44.24 and 44.25,

V.A.A.C.P.²²

Despite almost identical procedural facts, we reached the opposite conclusion in Williams.²³ In that case, the court of appeals originally affirmed the trial court's admission of an accomplice's out-of-court statement.²⁴ On review by this Court, the defendant argued that the statement was inadmissible because it failed to comply with the co-conspirator's exception to the hearsay rule under Rule 801(e)(2)(E) of the Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence. We reversed and remanded stating:

In the instant cause the court of appeals has yet to decide whether the statement in issue was made "in furtherance of" what appellant concedes was an ongoing conspiracy. We therefore remand this cause to that court for reconsideration of appellant's first point of error.²⁵

In reviewing that first point of error on remand, the court of appeals concluded that the statement was not admissible under the co-conspirator's exception to the hearsay rule, but found instead that it was admissible as a statement against interest.²⁶ When this Court reviewed the case a second time, we reversed and remanded stating, "[t]he Court of Appeals' endeavor to analyze the admissibility of this statement in the context of Rule 803(24) stepped outside the scope of this Court's remand order."²⁷ Without citing Adkins or any other relevant case law, this Court held that the court of appeals had exceeded its scope of review because it "decided a matter not argued, not briefed and not raised on appeal by either side."²⁸

Obviously, our decisions in Adkins and Williams are at odds and the courts of appeals have struggled with this inconsistency.²⁹ After reviewing the case law addressing the scope of review on remand, it is apparent that Williams is the aberration. In the ten years since our decision in Williams, it has never been cited in another of our majority opinions and was cited only once in a dissenting opinion.³⁰ Furthermore, very few court of appeals' opinions have followed the statement in Williams regarding the scope of appellate review on remand, and only one of those is published.³¹ We decline to follow Williams any further.

In Paulson v. State³² we noted:

We follow the doctrine of stare decisis to promote judicial efficiency and consistency, encourage reliance on judicial decisions, and contribute to the integrity of the judicial process. But if we conclude that one of our previous decisions was poorly reasoned or is unworkable, we do not achieve these goals by continuing to follow it.³³

Williams lacked analysis, is inconsistent with the majority of our case law on the subject, and has not been followed or cited in any other majority opinion of this Court. Furthermore, given the inconsistent state of the law on the scope of review after remand, overruling Williams will not obstruct judicial efficiency and consistency, hinder justifiable reliance on judicial decisions, or adversely affect the integrity of the judicial process. On the contrary, our holding today, by clarifying the law, promotes judicial efficiency and contributes to the accuracy and integrity of the judicial process.

Our reasoning in Paulson is consistent not only with our disavowal of Williams, but also with the purpose of reaffirming the Adkins approach at the court of appeals level. The courts of appeals ultimately strive for judicial accuracy, fairness, and efficiency. They ought not be forced to follow their own prior reasoning on remand of a particular case solely for the sake of consistency if, upon further reflection, they find that the earlier discussion of a point of error was poorly reasoned or unworkable. For example, in cases like Adkins and Williams, the courts of appeals, on remand, took pains to reach the correct result on the particular point of error despite the narrow...