Drumm v. State
| Decision Date | 02 November 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 52878,52878 |
| Parties | William Carlyle DRUMM, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
This is an appeal from a conviction for driving while license suspended under Article 6687b, Sec. 24, V.A.C.S. Art. 6687b, Sec. 34, V.A.C.S. Punishment was assessed at a twenty-five dollar fine and six months in jail.
In his first ground of error appellant asserts:
"The trial court erred when it overruled appellant's motion to quash the information in this cause because it failed to give appellant sufficient notice of the nature of the operator's license suspension relied upon by the state for conviction."
The information alleged in relevant part that appellant:
". . . on or about the 15th day of December A.D. 1974, in the County of Dallas and State of Texas, did unlawfully drive and operate a motor vehicle on a public street and highway there situated when his Texas operators license was then and there suspended, said suspension having been theretofore ordered and effected by the Texas Department of Public Safety under the authority and provisions of Art. 6687b, Sec. 24, Vernon's Annotated Texas Civil Statutes."
In his motion to quash the information appellant asserted the following reason:
The court overruled the motion to quash.
The information did allege that appellant's license was suspended under Art. 6687b, Sec. 24, V.A.C.S., but did not allege a subsection of Section 24. The statute in Section 24 provides:
"(a) The license of any person shall be automatically suspended upon final conviction of any of the following offenses:
1. Negligent homicide resulting from the operation of a motor vehicle;
2. Driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor or narcotic drugs;
3. Any offense punishable as a felony under the motor vehicle laws of this State;
4. A conviction of a driver of a motor vehicle involved in an accident or collision, upon a charge of failure to stop, render aid, and disclose his identity at the scene of said accident or collision;
5. A conviction upon a charge of aggravated assault upon the person by means of motor vehicle, as provided by law.
(b) The suspension above provided shall in the first instance be for a period of twelve (12) months. In event any license shall be suspended under the provision of this Section for a subsequent time, said subsequent suspension shall be for a period of eighteen (18) months.
(c) The suspension of any license shall be automatically extended upon licensee being convicted of operating a motor vehicle while the license of such person is suspended; such extended period of suspension to be for a like period as the original suspension, and is in addition to any other penalty assessed, as provided in this Act."
It can be seen that several grounds for automatic suspension are provided in Art. 6687b, Sec. 24, supra. In his brief on appeal appellant restricts his argument under this ground of error to the complaint that failure to allege the subsection of Art. 6687b, Sec. 24, supra, under which his license was suspended deprived him of sufficient notice upon which to prepare his defense.
In Tave v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 546 S.W.2d 317, 318, we held:
The issue here, however, is not whether the information in the case at bar is defective on its face, but whether it can withstand attack by a motion to quash for failure to give adequate notice on which to prepare a defense. This is the opposite of the situation in Ex parte Cannon, Tex.Cr.App., 546 S.W.2d 266, where the issue was not the sufficiency of the indictment to give adequate notice to the defendant, but was its sufficiency to invoke the jurisdiction of the trial court. See Ex parte Cannon, supra, concurring opinion at 270. These two functions of the state's accusatory pleading are distinct (see Day v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 532 S.W.2d 302, at 315, n. 7), and complaints regarding the sufficiency of that pleading to fulfill one or the other of those functions are subject to different rules for presentation, and different measures for validity. See American Plant Food Corp. v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 508 S.W.2d 598.
Although challenge to an accusation for failure to give adequate notice on which to prepare a defense must be asserted in a timely fashion 1 (American Plant Food, supra), when properly asserted with adequate statement of the manner in which notice is deficient, fundamental constitutional protections are invoked. Because of the fundamental notions of fairness that require adequate notice of the nature of the charges against the accused in our system of justice, a timely claim of inadequate notice requires careful consideration. This calls for examination of the criminal accusation from the...
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