Nix v. State
| Decision Date | 27 June 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 793-00.,793-00. |
| Citation | 65 S.W.3d 664 |
| Parties | Reginald Keith NIX, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Reginald Keith Nix, pro se.
Bridget R. Anderson, Asst. DA, Houston, Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.
KELLER, P.J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which WOMACK, KEASLER, HERVEY, and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.
Appellant pled no contest to misdemeanor theft and was placed on deferred adjudication community supervision. No court reporter's record was made of that proceeding,1 and no appeal was taken from the trial court's decision within the time limits prescribed by law. Appellant subsequently violated the conditions of his community supervision, his guilt was adjudicated, and he was sentenced to one year in jail.
On appeal of his sentence, appellant complained that his original plea had been taken in violation of his right to counsel and his right to a jury trial in the following respects:
(1) that the trial court did not inquire into whether he had knowingly and intelligently waived his right to counsel, (2) that the trial court violated the Code of Criminal Procedure and the state and federal constitutions by not advising him of the dangers of self-representation, and (3) that his waiver of a jury trial was invalid where the trial court initially did not appoint an attorney and where Appellant had not effectively waived counsel.2
These claims were not raised before the trial court at the revocation hearing, nor were they made in appellant's motion for new trial. Citing our decision in Manuel v. State,3 the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal for want of jurisdiction.
On discretionary review, appellant advances two contentions: (1) that his claims on appeal fall within a "fundamental error" exception to the holding in Manuel, and (2) that Manuel's holding should not be applied retroactively. We will affirm.
In Manuel, we stated that "a defendant placed on deferred adjudication community supervision may raise issues relating to the original plea proceeding, such as evidentiary sufficiency, only in appeals taken when deferred adjudication community supervision is first imposed."4 In arriving at that conclusion, we relied upon caselaw involving "regular" community supervision.5 This caselaw was relevant because we determined that "the legislative intent in enacting Article 44.01(j) was to permit defendants to appeal from deferred adjudication community supervision to the same extent (i.e. with the same rights and restrictions) as defendants are permitted to appeal from `regular' community supervision."6
Appellant contends that caselaw relating to regular community supervision recognizes exceptions to the general rule that the original plea cannot be attacked on an appeal of the revocation proceedings. Because Manuel is based upon this caselaw, appellant concludes that these exceptions must carry over to the deferred adjudication context. This particular contention is well taken. Two of the regular community supervision cases cited by Manuel to support its holding—Whetstone and Traylor— explicitly recognized that there were exceptions to the general rule.7 To the extent that "regular" probation cases recognized exceptions, these exceptions would logically carry over to the deferred adjudication context.8 But appellant can derive no comfort from our agreement with him on this point because his claims on appeal do not fall within the recognized exceptions.
Our cases recognize two exceptions to the general rule, which exceptions we shall call (1) the "void judgment" exception, and (2) the "habeas corpus" exception. The void judgment exception recognizes that there are some rare situations in which a trial court's judgment is accorded no respect due to a complete lack of power to render the judgment in question. A void judgment is a "nullity" and can be attacked at any time.9 If the original judgment imposing probation was void, then the trial court would have no authority to revoke probations, since, with no judgment imposing probation (because it is a nullity), there is nothing to revoke. In past cases involving regular probation, we have recognized that a defendant can raise on appeal from a revocation proceeding an error in the original plea hearing if the error would render the original judgment void.10 In accordance with the reasoning of these precedents, we hold that the void judgment exception also applies in the deferred adjudication context.
But a judgment is void only in very rare situations—usually due to a lack of jurisdiction. In civil cases, a judgment is void only when there was "no jurisdiction of the parties or property, no jurisdiction of the subject matter, no jurisdiction to enter a particular judgment, or no capacity to act as a court."11 This rule is essentially paralleled in criminal cases. A judgment of conviction for a crime is void when (1) the document purporting to be a charging instrument (i.e. indictment, information, or complaint) does not satisfy the constitutional requisites of a charging instrument,12 thus the trial court has no jurisdiction over the defendant, (2) the trial court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the offense charged, such as when a misdemeanor involving official misconduct is tried in a county court at law,13 (3) the record reflects that there is no evidence to support the conviction,14 or (4) an indigent defendant is required to face criminal trial proceedings without appointed counsel, when such has not been waived, in violation of Gideon v. Wainwright.15 While we hesitate to call this an exclusive list, it is very nearly so.
Moreover, for a judgment to be void, the record must leave no question about the existence of the fundamental defect. If the record is incomplete, and the missing portion could conceivably show that the defect does not in fact exist, then the judgment is not void, even though the available portions of the record tend to support the existence of the defect. For example, when a defendant levels a "no evidence" challenge against the conviction, but the record contains no court reporter's transcription of the original plea hearing, then the conviction is not void, even though the record—as far as it goes— tends to support the no evidence claim.16 "Without the transcription, we are unable to ascertain whether other evidence was introduced to support the appellant's conviction." 17
In recognizing Gideon error as "quasi-jurisdictional," the Supreme Court emphasized that a voiding defect should be one that can be ascertained from the record with little difficulty.18 In holding that ineffective assistance of counsel claims and involuntary plea claims do not, if meritorious, make a conviction void, the Supreme Court articulated several concerns, one of which was that such claims would require courts "to rummage through frequently nonexistent or difficult-to-obtain state court transcripts."19
Appellant has failed to allege an error that could render the original judgment of conviction void. All three of his claims turn on the theory that he was denied counsel or that a waiver of counsel was involuntary.20 But we cannot ascertain the truth of appellant's claims on this record without a transcription of the plea proceedings. Although the plea papers show appellant representing himself pro se, a transcript of the plea hearing might have shown that appellant voluntarily waived counsel and was informed by the trial court of the dangers of self-representation.21 Appellant cannot use the void judgment exception to gain relief.
The habeas corpus exception essentially involves the litigation of a writ of habeas corpus at the probation revocation proceedings. Because probation is not considered to be a "final" conviction, an application for writ of habeas corpus filed during the pendency of revocation proceedings would be returnable to the trial court, whose ruling would be reviewable by a court of appeals and, ultimately, subject to a petition for discretionary review from this Court.22 Had the application been filed separately, then, the same trial court would be responsible for resolving both the habeas application and the revocation proceedings, and these two proceedings would follow the same appellate path. We have held that, in the interest of judicial economy the probationer need not file a separate writ application but may mount his attack during the revocation hearing.23 To invoke the habeas corpus exception on appeal, the defendant must show: (a) that the claim is cognizable on a writ of habeas corpus and (b) that the defendant attempted to litigate the claim at the revocation proceeding.24
Today in Jordan, we overrule Warren and Carter to the extent those cases held that habeas corpus claims could be raised at a revocation hearing without actually filing a writ of habeas corpus application.25 However, even under the old rule, appellant's claims would fail because those claims were not brought to the trial court's attention at the revocation proceeding.26
The threshold question for any retroactivity analysis is whether the rule articulated is in fact a "new" rule.27 The standards for determining whether a rule is "new" vary, depending upon whether the rule is a purely court-made rule or an interpretation of a statute.28 So, we must determine whether the rule in Manuel derives its authority from our inherent judicial power or from statutory authority. We find that the rule is derived from statute. In Dillehey v. State, we found that certain amendments to Article 44.01—that became effective in 1987— gave defendants who were placed on deferred adjudication the same right to appeal that existed for defendants given regular probation.29 As we have remarked earlier in this opinion, Manuel observed that the Legislature intended to permit deferred adjudication defendants to appeal to the same extent—with the same rights and...
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