Ex parte Thomas

• Citation: 623 S.W.3d 370
• Decision Date: 31 March 2021
• Docket Number: NO. WR-89,128-01,WR-89,128-01
• Parties: EX PARTE Steven THOMAS, Applicant
• Court: Court of Appeals of Texas. Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas

623 S.W.3d 370

EX PARTE Steven THOMAS, Applicant

NO. WR-89,128-01

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Filed: March 31, 2021

Rehearing Denied June 23, 2021

Stanley G. Schneider, Romy Kaplan, Houston, for Applicant.

Newell, J., delivered the opinion of the in which Keller, P.J., Hervey, Richardson, Keel, Walker, Slaughter and McClure, JJ., joined.

A juvenile court may waive its exclusive original jurisdiction and transfer a juvenile case to the appropriate district court for criminal proceedings if certain statutory and constitutional requirements are met. Applicant Steven Thomas, at 16, committed capital murder. When he was 19, the juvenile court waived its exclusive jurisdiction and transferred Applicant's case to district court, where Applicant pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of murder. Decades passed. Applicant did not appeal his transfer or his case or file a writ of habeas corpus. Then, this Court decided Moon v. State , 451 S.W.3d 28 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014). In that case, we held that if an order waiving juvenile jurisdiction does not contain factually-supported, case-specific findings, then the order is invalid.¹ As discussed below, that holding necessarily means that, in such circumstances, a district court never acquires jurisdiction.² Based upon Moon , Applicant argues that because the order waiving juvenile jurisdiction did not contain factually-supported, case-specific findings, it was invalid, and thus the district court never acquired jurisdiction.³

But the type of findings Moon requires are neither grounded in the text of the transfer statute,⁴ nor in Kent v. United States , 383 U.S. 541, 86 S.Ct. 1045, 16 L.Ed.2d 84 (1966), the Supreme Court precedent that we purportedly relied upon in Moon . Requiring them may be good policy, but the lack of case-specific findings has nothing to do with jurisdiction, fundamental constitutional rights, or even the transfer statute itself. The juvenile court's transfer order in this case may have lacked factually-supported, case-specific findings, but that did not make that order invalid or deprive the district court of jurisdiction.⁵ Consequently, Applicant is not entitled to habeas corpus relief.

Background

On August 19, 1994, the Houston Police Department (HPD) responded to a home invasion double-murder. Several assailants had entered a home yelling "police" and demanding drugs and money. They bound the victims with duct tape, ransacked the home, and fired multiple firearms. Six victims—two adult females and four children—survived; two male victims, Everett Cooper and Joseph Smith, died of gunshot wounds and asphyxia as a result of gagging and suffocation.

A few days later, there was an armed bank robbery in Normangee, Texas.⁶ During flight from the bank robbery, the suspects murdered an elderly woman so they could steal her car. HPD later figured out that most of the federal bank robbers, including Applicant, committed the August 19, 1994 home invasion double-murder in Houston. Applicant was, at the time of both crimes, 16.

On September 8, 1994, Applicant surrendered to FBI authorities. Applicant turned 17 later that month and was certified to stand trial in federal court as an adult. A jury convicted him of bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) & (d), and use of a firearm during a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). The federal district court sentenced him to 300 months’ imprisonment for bank robbery and to 60 months’ imprisonment for the firearm conviction, to be served consecutively. His convictions were affirmed on direct appeal,⁷ and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued final mandate in July 1996.⁸

One month later, in August 1996, the State filed a petition in the Harris County juvenile court alleging that Applicant committed capital murder while under the age of 17, and the clerk assigned it a juvenile cause number. Applicant was 18. The State also asked the juvenile court to waive juvenile jurisdiction and certify the proceedings to district court. Counsel was appointed. On October 14, 1996, the State filed an amended petition and amended motion to waive jurisdiction. Applicant meanwhile had turned 19. On October 21, 1996, Applicant was brought from federal prison to the 315th Juvenile District Court. The juvenile court ordered a complete diagnostic study; a social evaluation; and a full investigation of Applicant, his circumstances, and the circumstances of the alleged offenses, and reset the case. Applicant refused the psychological and psychiatric evaluations on the advice of his attorney.

After the study, a hearing on the waiver of jurisdiction, and legal briefing on the due-diligence aspect of transfer,⁹ the 315th Juvenile District Court waived its jurisdiction and transferred Applicant's case to the 180th District Court. The transfer order was three pages long.¹⁰ Applicant did not appeal the transfer of jurisdiction.¹¹ The grand jury indicted Applicant for capital murder, and, still 19, he pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Applicant did not appeal the conviction.

Analysis

Applicant now argues that the juvenile court's failure to satisfy the requirements set out in Moon rendered the entire criminal proceeding void because the district court never had jurisdiction over him. Claims that a juvenile transfer order is void are cognizable on a writ of habeas corpus because they involve the jurisdiction of the trial court to hear a case.¹² Similarly, claims that a juvenile court wholly failed to conduct an examination and hearing before transferring a juvenile case to district court may be cognizable if the failure results in an arbitrary deprivation of liberty in violation of the fundamental, constitutional right to due process.¹³ But factually-supported, case-specific findings in the transfer order are not required by the statute to bestow jurisdiction or the constitution as a matter of fundamental, constitutional due process. Consequently, Applicant's challenge to the jurisdiction of the trial court lacks merit, and we deny relief.

Cognizability

It is axiomatic that review of jurisdictional claims or denials of fundamental constitutional rights are cognizable in post-conviction habeas corpus proceedings.¹⁴ The core reason why jurisdictional issues can never be waived (at least for purposes of raising them in an application for a writ of habeas corpus) is because a court that lacks subject matter jurisdiction has no authority to fix errors in a judgment or order that was entered without subject-matter jurisdiction.¹⁵ The presumption of regularity of a judgment does not apply if the court lacked jurisdiction.¹⁶ This principle is of universal application and has been applied in courts of Texas throughout their history.¹⁷ Even the oft-stated holding that the writ of habeas corpus should not be used as a substitute for appeal pre-supposes that the judgment being reviewed was entered by a court with jurisdiction.¹⁸

Generally, subject-matter jurisdiction is never presumed and cannot be waived.¹⁹ The Texas Constitution gives our Legislature the power to prescribe the jurisdictions of the courts.²⁰ Our Legislature has granted courts designated as juvenile courts with original and exclusive jurisdiction over juvenile proceedings.²¹ The burden is upon the State to prove transfer is appropriate.²² The transfer of a juvenile offender from juvenile court to criminal court for prosecution as an adult should be regarded as the exception, not the rule; the operative principle is that, whenever feasible, children and adolescents below a certain age should be "protected and rehabilitated rather than subjected to the harshness of the criminal system."²³ For a juvenile court to validly waive jurisdiction and transfer a case to a criminal court, it must satisfy the terms of the statute.

Moon ’s Holding Was Both Jurisdictional And Wrong

Given this backdrop, Applicant understandably argues that the juvenile court's failure to satisfy the requirements set out in Moon rendered his entire criminal proceeding void. After all, we affirmed the court of appeals’ holding in Moon to that effect.²⁴ We did, in a parting footnote, observe that neither party had challenged the disposition that the case remained "pending in the juvenile court."²⁵ But we then went on to leave the question—"pending for what?"—to the juvenile court.²⁶ Further, we rejected the argument that we lacked authority to order the court of appeals to remand the case to the juvenile court.²⁷ As we explained:

The juvenile court has either validly waived its exclusive jurisdiction, thereby conferring jurisdiction on the criminal courts, or it has not. We cannot order the court of appeals to remand the cause to the juvenile court unless and until we affirm its judgment that the juvenile court's transfer order was invalid and that the criminal courts therefore never acquired jurisdiction. Unless and until the transfer order is declared invalid, the criminal courts retain jurisdiction, and the juvenile court lacks jurisdiction to retroactively supply critical findings of fact to establish whether or not it has validly waived its jurisdiction.²⁸

Given that we affirmed the court of appeals’ judgment dismissing the case for a lack of jurisdiction, we necessarily held that the criminal district court lacked jurisdiction.²⁹ This is how courts of appeals reviewing Moon have understood the case as well.³⁰ But, as discussed below, Moon ’s court-made requirement—that transferring juvenile courts set out specific fact-findings in the transfer order for transferring the case—is not supported by the text of the statute nor United States Supreme Court precedent.³¹

The Text of the Juvenile Transfer Statute Does Not Require Detailed Fact-Findings to Establish Jurisdiction

Under Section 54.02(a), a juvenile court may transfer to the criminal district court for trial a case involving a person who was 15 years old or older at the time he is alleged to...