Timmins v. State
| Decision Date | 10 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | NO. PD-0867-18,PD-0867-18 |
| Citation | 601 S.W.3d 345 |
| Parties | Troy Allen TIMMINS, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
M. Patrick Maguire, Ryan Kellus Turner, for Troy Allen Timmins.
Scott F. Monroe, Kerrville, David A. Schulman, Austin, for State of Texas.
When a trial judge informs a defendant that his bond is revoked, but allows him to report to the county jail later that day, can the defendant really be said to have been "released from custody" in contemplation of our bail-jumping statute?1 And if the defendant does not report to the jail as ordered, has he "fail[ed] to appear in accordance with the terms of his release"?2 We answer both questions "yes." We therefore affirm the court of appeals' judgment that held accordingly.
Troy Allen Timmins was on bond for two felony offenses. At a pretrial hearing at which Timmins was personally present, the trial judge revoked Timmins's bond for testing positive for methamphetamine. Ordinarily, when a trial judge revokes a defendant's bond in open court for violating a bond condition, the defendant is "immediately returned to custody."3 But in this case, Timmins pleaded with the trial judge to let him escort his elderly mother home before taking him into custody. The judge graciously obliged. He revoked Timmins's bond, but allowed Timmins to turn himself in at the Bandera County Jail by three o'clock that afternoon. The judge warned Timmins that if he did not report to the Bandera County Jail as ordered, he would "pick[ ] up a new felony in each of these cases." The warning did not work; Timmins never reported to the Bandera County Jail.
The State charged Timmins with bail jumping or failure to appear under Section 38.10(a) of the Texas Penal Code. That statute provides:
A Bandera County jury convicted Timmins of this offense and sentenced him to twenty years' confinement.
Timmins appealed. By way of challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction, Timmins argued that his conduct did not meet the statutory definition of bail jumping or failure to appear. First, Timmins argued that at the time of the offense, he was not "a person lawfully released from custody." He also argued that, whatever his failure to report to the Bandera County Jail may have amounted to, it did not amount to a failure to "appear" in contemplation of Penal Code Section 38.10(a). The court of appeals rejected both arguments and, after modifying the trial court's judgment to delete the assessment of attorney's fees, otherwise affirmed Timmins's conviction.5
Timmins filed a petition for discretionary review in this Court. He contends that, on both prongs of his sufficiency challenge, the court of appeals has misinterpreted the scope of Penal Code Section 38.10. We granted the petition to examine (1) whether, by allowing Timmins to drive his mother home and self-report to the Bandera County Jail, the trial court actually "released [Timmins] from custody," and (2) whether, by failing to report to the Bandera County Jail as ordered, Timmins "failed to appear in accordance with the terms of his release."6
7 This is one such occasion.
When we construe a statute, we begin by examining its text in the context in which it appears.8 If this examination reveals a meaning that should have been plain to the legislators who voted on the statute, we ordinarily give effect to that meaning.9 We will look beyond the statute's text and context to discern its meaning in only two situations. We will do so when the text does not bear a plain contextual meaning, that is, when the text is reasonably susceptible to more than one understanding, and we will do so when the text's unambiguous meaning would lead to "absurd consequences that the Legislature could not possibly have intended."10
The first issue we must decide is whether, at the time of the alleged offense, Timmins had the status of "a person lawfully released from custody." Timmins does not challenge the lawfulness of the trial judge's decision to let him escort his mother home after revoking his bond. But he does question whether the trial judge actually "released [him] from custody" in contemplation of our bail-jumping statute.11 To avoid begging this question, we will refer to the judge's order permitting Timmins to take his mother home as a "furlough" (rather than a "release").
As relevant here, Penal Code Section 38.01(1) defines "custody" for Chapter 38 purposes as being "under arrest by a peace officer or under restraint by a public servant pursuant to an order of a court of this state or another state of the United States."12 We have previously held that a person may be in "custody" for Chapter 38 purposes even if he is not under "actual, physical, hands-on restraint."13 A reviewing court must therefore "look at the legal status of the individual" to determine whether he was in custody at the time of the alleged offense.14 So, for example, if someone has the "legal status ... of an arrestee," a factfinder can rationally conclude that he was in Chapter 38 custody for the duration of that status, regardless of whether he was physically restrained.15
With that in mind, here is the gist of Timmins's argument: Although the furlough gave Timmins some additional freedom to move about, it nevertheless left some restraint on his freedom of movement. So, even though Timmins was not under actual, physical, hands-on restraint at the time of the alleged offense, his legal status was that of a person under a trial court's "constructive custody."16 And because the furlough left Timmins in some form of custody, the trial judge cannot be said to have "released" Timmins from custody when he granted it. Accordingly, Timmins argues that the State ought to have charged him with escaping from custody under Penal Code Section 38.06(a) —not bail jumping.17 According to Timmins, bail jumping can occur only when the defendant is released from all forms of custody, direct and constructive.
Taken to its logical conclusion, Timmins's argument would mean that a person admitted to bail can be said to have been "released from custody" only when his bond conditions leave absolutely no restriction on his freedom of movement. But that is a contradiction in terms. Bail always imposes a restriction on the bailed person's freedom of movement—the restriction that, on certain days, the bailed person cannot go wherever he pleases. On certain days, to be determined by the trial judge and his staff, the bailed person must bring himself back to the courthouse to work toward concluding the matter that brought him there in the first place.18 That being the case, construing the phrase "released from custody" the way that Timmins proposes would lead to an absurd outcome that the Legislature could not possibly have intended.19 Nobody could ever be prosecuted under Section 38.10(a), because nobody freed from jail "on condition that he subsequently appear" could ever be said to have been "released" from custody.20 The "condition that he subsequently appear" would mean that the bailed person was not released from all forms of custody. He would remain in the trial court's constructive custody, and therefore, the bail jumping statute would not apply. That would render the statute useless.
Even if we are wrong that bail necessarily imposes a restriction on a person's freedom of movement, Timmins's argument would still lead to implausible, if not absurd, outcomes in cases in which the bond conditions themselves restrict the bailed person's freedom of movement. To take but one of many possible examples, consider a defendant charged with stalking.21 The Code of Criminal Procedure authorizes a magistrate setting that defendant's bond to prohibit him, as a condition of his release, from going "to or near the residence, place of employment, or business of the victim."22 A bond condition preventing the defendant from going to or near the victim's house undoubtedly restricts his freedom of movement. If Timmins is right that this restraint means that the defendant was never really "released from custody," then this defendant would be immune from prosecution under Penal Code Section 38.10(a). That outcome strains credulity.
To account for this, we conclude that the phrase "released from custody" must include incremental or incomplete releases—that is, a trial judge's modifying a person's custodial status from more-restrictive to less-restrictive. When a judge frees a person from a more-restrictive form of custody "on condition that he subsequently appear," but leaves some restrictions on the person's freedom of movement, the judge can still...
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