Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
Daniel v. State
No. PD-0037-22 2/14/24
Issue:
Does an officer’s mistake of law nonetheless give rise to reasonable suspicion to stop a driver when the status of the law is unclear?
Holding:
Yes. The officer stopped the defendant for failure to maintain a single lane, §545.060(a) of the Texas Transportation Code. After further investigation, the officer determined the defendant was driving while intoxicated. The dashcam video showed that while the defendant had failed to stay in his lane of travel multiple times, there was never any traffic around the vehicle nor anything else unsafe about his driving. At the time of the stop, the Court or Criminal Appeals had not yet decided State v. Hardin, 664 S.W.3d 867 (Tex. Crim. App. 2022), but the lower appellate courts were divided over whether §545.060(a) set out one offense with two elements or two separate offenses. The Court ruled that the officer’s mistaken interpretation of §545.060(a) was “entirely reasonable in view of the nuanced statutory language and the conflicting caselaw from this Court and the intermediate courts of appeals interpreting it.” Read opinion.
Concurrence (Yeary, J.):
“Officers who correctly read, understand, and enforce laws like the one at issue in this case—laws that are clear and unambiguous, but which are nevertheless misconstrued by the courts—should never be penalized for enforcing the law as it is written by our Legislature. But this Court’s opinion in Hardin will, eventually, cause this to happen, along with other anomalous and possibly even tragic results.” Read concurrence.
Dissent (Walker, J.):
“At the time Appellant was stopped, Hernandez was the controlling law in Bell County, and an officer conducting a stop could not have an objectively reasonable mistake of law about what the statute requires—the law was settled in the third appellate district. The court of appeals did not err in adhering to its precedent.” Read dissent.
Commentary:
For traffic stops that happened after Hardin was decided by the CCA, law enforcement officers and prosecutors will not be able to rely upon this decision with regard to the observed violation of failure to maintain a single lane. Nevertheless, this will be a helpful decision for prosecutors who litigate traffic stops based upon observed Transportation Code violations. It is imperative that a prosecutor prove that a law enforcement officer really was making a reasonable mistake as to the law when he stopped the defendant. Prosecutors should read this decision very carefully, as well as the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Heien v. North Carolina.
Texas Court of Appeals
Karr v. State
No. 02-23-00220-CR 2/8/24
Issue:
Did the trial court commit harmful error when it erroneously used one of the defendant’s previous convictions to enhance an offense from a third degree to a second-degree felony, then erroneously used a second conviction to enhance the defendant’s punishment to a first degree?
Holding:
Yes. The defendant was charged with failure to register as a sex offender under Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 62.101(a), which is a third-degree felony. The State also alleged a previous conviction for a failure to register under Art. 62.102(c), as well as a repeat offender paragraph. The indictment and trial court operated under the assumption that the offense level for failure to register with a previous conviction is a second-degree offense and could be increased to a first-degree punishment range with the repeater paragraph. But the Fort Worth court of appeals instead concluded that the failure to register statute “provides that if the person required to register had been previously convicted of a failure to register, the person’s punishment is increased to the next punishment level” (emphasis in original). Thus, the offense level for failure to register with a previous conviction remains a third-degree offense with a punishment range of a second-degree felony. Even with the repeater allegation, the punishment range should never have been higher than second-degree felony range. Although the defendant was punished with a 15-year sentence (which is within the second-degree range), the Court remanded the case for a new punishment trial with the correct punishment range being considered. Read opinion.
Commentary:
Contrary to what the defendant claimed, the State did not attempt to enhance the defendant’s punishment under §12.42(d) of the Penal Code—the so-called habitual offender statute. Instead, the State attempted to enhance the defendant’s punishment under Art. 62.102(c) and/or §12.42(a) of the Penal Code with a single prior conviction for the offense of failure to register as a sex offender—enhancing the defendant’s punishment to that of a second-degree felony. The State then attempted to use another prior conviction for failure to register as a sex-offender to raise what was believed to be a second-degree felony to a first-degree felony under §12.42(b). Based on the language of the statutes, enhancing a defendant’s punishment of a third-degree felony to that of a second-degree felony under §12.42(a) and/or Article 62.102(c) does not transform that third-degree felony to a second-degree felony. It just enhances the punishment. Therefore, the offense could not be further enhanced to that of a first-degree felony under §12.42(b).
It is important to read the language of enhancement statutes to determine if the prior conviction only enhances a defendant’s punishment or if it changes the degree of the offense to a higher degree of offense. With regard to the actual punishment that the defendant received in this case—which was within the second-degree felony punishment range—the case still had to be remanded for a new punishment hearing because it was clear the trial judge was operating under the mistaken impression that the first-degree felony punishment range was appropriate. The remand of the case for a new punishment hearing is entirely consistent with how courts have treated this kind of error.
2024 Penal Code Changes
In its 3rd Special Session of 2023, the 88th Legislature passed SB 4, “relating to the punishment for certain criminal conduct involving the smuggling of persons or the operation of a stash house; increasing criminal penalties,” which amended 10 statutes in the Texas Penal Code and enacted one new statute, effective 2/6/24. The changes to those 11 statutes are included in the PDF posted here. The changes will also be incorporated into the next edition of TDCAA’s code books in summer 2025, along with any other changes made in the 89th Session. Find the free PDF here.
Announcement
The National Computer Forensics Institute is offering two different courses for prosecutors. The 5 day courses focus on digital evidence, computer forensics and social networks for state and local prosecutors. All costs associated with the course (including travel) are covered by the United States Secret Service. The dates for the courses are below and the deadline to apply is February 23, 2024.
Course Dates for Digital Evidence for Prosecutors (DEP):
June 24-28, 2024
July 15-19, 2024
August 19-23, 2024
September 23-27, 2024
The application is accessed by clicking this secure link: https://forms.office.com/r/WQJJqrzZ1q
Course Date for Advanced Digital Evidence for Prosecutors (ADEP):
June 10-14, 2024
September 9-13, 2024
The application is accessed by clicking this secure link: https://forms.office.com/r/8n8n33zHPd
More information about the NCFI can be found at: