Thomas v. State

• Decision Date: 05 April 2017
• Docket Number: NO. PD-0295-16,PD-0295-16
• Citation: 516 S.W.3d 498
• Parties: Cody Lang THOMAS, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

516 S.W.3d 498

Cody Lang THOMAS, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas

NO. PD-0295-16

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Delivered: April 5, 2017

ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLANT: Martin Eric Braddy, Martin Braddy Attorney at Law, 121A Oak Avenue, Sulphur Springs, TX 75482.

ATTORNEYS FOR THE STATE: Lisa McMinn, Stacey Soule, State Prosecuting Attorney's, P.O. Box 13046, Austin, TX 78711.

OPINION

Alcala, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

In this State's petition for discretionary review, we address the proper remedy for an illegal sentence imposed as a result of a charge-bargained guilty plea. Cody Lang Thomas, appellant, agreed to enter an open plea of guilty to state-jail felony theft as a lesser-included offense of the charged offense of third-degree felony engaging in organized criminal activity. Because the State sought to enhance the state-jail felony theft charge with two prior convictions, the parties believed that appellant was subject to a punishment range for a second-degree felony. The trial judge sentenced appellant to twenty years' imprisonment. On appeal, the court of appeals determined that this twenty-year sentence was illegal due to an improper application of prior-conviction enhancements resulting in a sentence outside the statutory range, and it remanded the case for a new punishment hearing. In its petition for discretionary review, the State does not challenge the court of appeals's holding that appellant's sentence was illegal, but it contends that the court of appeals erred by remanding appellant's case for resentencing because the proper remedy for the illegal sentence under these circumstances is setting aside appellant's guilty plea.¹ We agree with the State's position that, because this was a negotiated plea-bargain agreement for an illegal range of punishment, the parties must be returned to their original positions prior to entering into that plea bargain. Accordingly, we reverse the court of appeals's judgment that had remanded this case for a new punishment hearing, and we instead set aside appellant's guilty plea and remand this case for a new trial in its entirety.

I. Background

Appellant was indicted for the offense of engaging in organized criminal activity. TEX. PENAL CODE § 71.02(a). The alleged underlying offense was theft of property worth more than $1,500 but less than $20,000, a state-jail felony. Id. § 31.03(e)(4) (West 2015). Because the underlying offense of theft was a state-jail felony, the engaging in organized criminal activity charge was a third-degree felony, punishable by two to ten years in prison. Id. § 71.02(b). However, appellant had several prior criminal convictions, including convictions for: (1) third-degree felony escape and (2) state-jail felony burglary of a building, the sentence for which had been enhanced to a third-degree felony punishment range by two additional prior state-jail felony convictions. The State gave oral notice to appellant that, if his case went to trial, it would seek to use these prior convictions to enhance his sentence for the engaging in organized criminal activity charge. Both appellant and the State mistakenly believed that, with these prior convictions serving as enhancements, the punishment range for the charge of engaging in organized criminal activity would be from twenty-five to ninety-nine years or life under the Habitual Felon statute. See id. § 12.42(d).² Appellant and the State negotiated a charge-bargain agreement. The State agreed to reduce the engaging in organized crime charge to the lesser-included offense of state-jail felony theft in exchange for appellant's plea of guilty to the lesser offense and his plea of true to the enhancements. The printed plea admonishment reflected the parties' understanding that, due to the enhancements, the theft charge would be punished as a second-degree felony, punishable by two to twenty years' imprisonment and a fine not to exceed $10,000. After advising appellant of the potential two to twenty year punishment range, the trial judge accepted appellant's plea to the theft offense and found the enhancements due to his prior convictions true. The trial judge then sentenced appellant to twenty years' imprisonment.

On appeal, appellant asserted that the sentence imposed against him was illegal because it was improper to combine his prior convictions to enhance the range of punishment for state-jail felony theft to that of a second-degree felony. The court of appeals sustained appellant's challenge. Thomas v. State , 481 S.W.3d 685, 686 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2015) (reh'g denied). The court of appeals explained that a sentence for a state-jail felony—here, theft—may not be enhanced under Section 12.425 of the Texas Penal Code through a combination of a prior conviction for a non-state jail felony (the third-degree felony escape conviction) and a prior conviction for an enhanced state-jail felony (the state-jail-felony burglary conviction). Id. at 693 ; TEX. PENAL CODE § 12.425. Thus, the court of appeals held that the enhanced sentence imposed by the trial court was outside the permissible range of punishment for a state-jail felony. Thomas , 481 S.W.3d at 693. Because the twenty-year sentence assessed was outside the permissible range of punishment, the court of appeals determined that the proper remedy was to remand the case to the trial court for a new punishment hearing. Id. (citing Ex parte Rich , 194 S.W.3d 508, 514 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006) ).

The State filed a motion for rehearing in which it asked the court of appeals to reform its judgment by remanding the case to the trial court for a new trial in its entirety, rather than remanding only for a new punishment hearing. The State asserted that, had it realized that appellant would be facing only up to two years' confinement for the state-jail offense, it very likely would not have entered into the plea agreement. The State contended that the "crux of the original plea agreement dealt with removing the [engaging in organized criminal activity] language in the indictment and capping the punishment at twenty years in the penitentiary." The State further averred that appellant "readily admitted and pled true to the two enhancement paragraphs in order to obtain this benefit." Citing language from this Court's opinion in Ex parte Adkins , the State contended that the proper remedy was to set aside the plea agreement because to uphold the agreement under these circumstances would "adjust the tenor of the mutual obligation entered into by the parties" and would "create a new bargain not contemplated by the parties or the trial court when it accepted the plea agreement and entered its judgment accordingly." See 767 S.W.2d 809, 811 (Tex. Crim. App. 1989). The court of appeals summarily rejected these arguments by overruling the State's motion.

In the instant proceeding, neither the State nor appellant challenges the correctness of the court of appeals's analysis with respect to the impermissibility of combining appellant's two prior convictions to enhance the range of punishment for a state-jail felony to that of a second-degree felony. The sole question at issue in this proceeding, therefore, is the propriety of the court of appeals's decision to remedy the illegal sentence by upholding appellant's conviction and remanding the case to the trial court for a new punishment hearing. Appellant argues that the court of appeals's decision to remand his case for a new punishment hearing is proper because the precise range of punishment available was not a binding element of the plea agreement. In appellant's view, the charge-bargain plea agreement in this case was limited to an agreement to reduce the third-degree-felony charge for engaging in organized criminal activity to a state-jail felony theft charge in exchange for appellant's plea of guilty to the lesser offense. Despite being admonished that a guilty plea to theft would expose him to a punishment range applicable for second-degree felonies, appellant argues that such exposure was not a term or condition of the parties' agreement. Thus, appellant asserts that the fact that the parties misunderstood the enhancement effect of the prior convictions and the fact that appellant is no longer subject to second-degree felony punishment has not negated the bargain of the initial agreement—a reduced charge in exchange for relieving the State of the burden of proving its case. Conversely, the State reiterates the arguments it presented to the court of appeals in its motion for rehearing by contending that the proper remedy under these circumstances is to set aside the plea and judgment rather than reassessing only the sentence. In the State's view, remanding for a new punishment hearing gives appellant an undeserved windfall because it discards the second-degree felony punishment contemplated by the parties at the time that they entered into the plea agreement but preserves a state-jail felony conviction for which the State could have sought a conviction for a third-degree felony and habitual punishment. Thus, in the State's view, because the bargained-for exchange has been undermined, the proper remedy is to set aside the plea and return the parties to their positions prior to the guilty plea.

We agree with the State's view that the appropriate remedy under these circumstances is to set aside appellant's guilty plea and restore the parties to their original positions prior to entering into the plea agreement. We explain our reasoning below.

II. Analysis

"At its core, a plea bargain is a contract between the state and the defendant."

Moore v. State , 295 S.W.3d 329, 331 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009). The contract that results from the plea bargaining process is the product of a defendant's relinquishment of his right to go to trial in exchange for a reduction in the charge and/or sentence. Perkins v. Ct. App. for Third Jud. Dist. of Tex. , 738 S.W.2d 276, 282 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987). In interpreting plea...