Huff v. State
| Docket Number | 02-22-00254-CR |
| Decision Date | 31 August 2023 |
| Parties | Jason A. Huff, Appellant v. The State of Texas |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Do Not Publish Tex.R.App.P. 47.2(b)
On Appeal from the 432nd District Court Tarrant County, Texas Trial Court No. 1651785D
Before Sudderth, C.J.; Kerr and Wallach, JJ.
After a hearing, the trial court revoked Jason A. Huff's deferred adjudication community supervision, adjudicated him guilty of the offense of sexual assault of a child under seventeen years old, and sentenced him to fifteen years' confinement. Huff raises two points on appeal. First, he argues that the trial court abused its discretion by failing to construe his motion for new trial, which he filed after the first day of the hearing, as a motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Second, he challenges the trial court's failure to hold a hearing on his postjudgment motion for new trial and motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Because we may not consider the merits of Huff's first point and because he has not preserved his second point, we will affirm.
Huff was charged with sexual assault of A.D., his fourteen-year-old relative, and three counts of indecency with a child by sexual contact.[1] Huff signed a plea agreement under which he agreed to plead guilty to sexual assault in return for being placed on deferred adjudication community supervision for seven years and the State's waiving the indecency-by-contact counts. The plea paperwork that Huff signed included a judicial confession in which Huff swore that he had read the indictment and had "committed each and every act alleged therein, except those waived by the State"; that all facts alleged in the indictment were true; that he was "guilty of the instant offense(s) as well as all lesser included offenses"; and that he understood "what [he had been] charged with and ple[d] guilty to the charge listed on page one of th[e] document." In accordance with the agreement, on May 20 2022, a magistrate judge placed Huff on deferred adjudication.
A week after the deferred adjudication proceeding, the State filed a petition to proceed to adjudication because Huff had failed to report to the Tarrant County Community Supervision and Corrections Department (CSCD) as ordered by the magistrate court as a condition of his community supervision. The State filed an amended petition on August 2, 2022. The amended petition asserted that Huff had failed to report at any time during July 2022, had failed to attend a required sexoffender treatment program, had failed to register as a sex offender had failed to notify his supervising officer about a change of address, and had resided in a household with a child under seventeen years of age.
At the hearing on the petition, Huff testified that he had become homeless and had not understood how to register as a sex offender while homeless. He further testified that once he had found a home, he had given that address to his probation officer and had made an appointment with her, but she had not shown up. On cross- examination, he was asked about the underlying charge to which he had pled guilty, and he disagreed with the prosecutor about a detail of the offense:
During Huff's attorney's closing argument, the trial court interrupted to ask the attorney, who had not represented Huff in the underlying plea proceeding, whether the attorney was "concerned that [his] client [wa]s not accepting responsibility despite pleading guilty to the offense." The trial court continued, "I mean, he's saying, I just pled guilty because I had to plead guilty, or for whatever reason, but he's saying he didn't commit the sexual assault." The trial court expressed concern that Huff had not actually agreed to the plea agreement: To Huff's attorney, the trial court asked, "[D]oesn't [that] cause you to pause?" Huff's attorney responded that in his many years of practice, he had "seen a lot of people plead guilty to a lot of things whether they are willing to admit immediately following the plea or not."
The trial court then stated that its plenary jurisdiction had not yet elapsed, and therefore if Huff wanted to file a motion for new trial, the trial court might "seriously consider it [and] place [Huff] back in the original position[,] and we'll have a trial on the matter, if [Huff] so cho[o]se[s], on the merits, with a jury." After conferring with Huff, Huff's attorney announced that he would be filing a motion for new trial that afternoon.
The trial court indicated that it had not definitely decided to grant the motion if filed and expressed its belief that it needed the State's consent because more than thirty days had passed since the court's deferred adjudication order. The prosecutor indicated that he needed to talk to the complainant first, and the trial court agreed and stated that it wanted to hear the State's "candid thoughts" because "if a person is claiming he's truly innocent and entered his plea less than freely and voluntarily and then he wants to have the exposure of facing all four counts, under the law and the appropriate circumstances, stacking can be appropriate." The trial court then scheduled the hearing to resume the next afternoon.
When the hearing resumed the next day, however, the trial court stated that it had been incorrect the previous day and that under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 21, the motion for new trial was untimely. See Tex.R.App.P. 21.4 (allowing a defendant to file a motion for new trial "before, but no later than 30 days after, the date when the trial court imposes or suspends sentence in open court").[2] Huff did not object or ask the trial court to consider the new-trial motion as a motion to withdraw his guilty plea. The parties then proceeded with their closing arguments.
At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court found true the allegations that Huff had failed to report to CSCD and to comply with sex-offender registration requirements, adjudicated Huff guilty, and sentenced him to fifteen years' confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Huff then filed another motion for new trial, styled as a combined motion for new trial and motion to withdraw his guilty plea. The motion was overruled by operation of law.
In his first issue, Huff argues that the trial court had the authority and discretion to allow Huff to withdraw his plea at the revocation hearing and that the trial court should have construed his first motion for new trial as a motion to withdraw his plea and should have then ruled on the motion. See State v. Evans, 843 S.W.2d 576, 577 (Tex. Crim App. 1992) (); cf. Pacheco v. State, 440 S.W.3d 744, 748 (Tex. App.-Amarillo 2013, pet. ref'd) ().
Regarding how the trial court construed the motion, the trial court's language on the first day of the hearing, combined with its citing Rule 21 on the second day, indicate that the trial court did not view the motion to be anything but an untimely motion for new trial. See Donovan v. State, 17 S.W.3d 407, 410 (Tex. App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2000) (), aff'd, 68 S.W.3d at 633. Huff neither asked the trial court to consider the motion as a motion to withdraw his plea nor orally moved to withdraw the plea, and he did not object to the trial court's characterization of the motion as untimely or its application of Rule 21. See Tex.R.App.P. 33.1. As for Huff's argument that the trial court should have ruled on the motion, the trial court did in effect overrule the motion on the ground that it was untimely.
Given these circumstances, we construe Huff's argument under his first point to be that the trial court abused its discretion by not considering the substance of the motion. Further, given Huff's brief's statements that the trial court had the discretion to allow him to withdraw his plea and his assertions about the trial's court willingness to entertain the motion on the first day of the hearing, we construe his brief to argue that the trial court should have granted the relief requested...
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