PD-0756-23 02/07/2024
1. “Did the court of appeals err by determining that Texas Government Code § 30.00027 deprived the intermediate appellate court of jurisdiction to hear the State’s appeal from an adverse decision made by a county-level court reviewing a judgment from a municipal court of record?
a. Does Chapter 30 of the Texas Government Code expressly divest the intermediate appellate courts and this Court of jurisdiction to hear appeals by the State in cases originating in a municipal court of record?
b. Does binding precedent from this Court provide that Article 44.01 of the Code of Criminal Procedure governs the State’s ability to appeal cases originating in municipal courts of record?
c. Does the court of appeals’s interpretation of Chapter 30 of the Texas Government Code render § 30.00026 meaningless?
d. Does the court of appeals’s interpretation of Texas Government Code § 30.00027 add limits to an appellee’s right to appeal which do not appear in the statutory text?”
Villa was convicted in a municipal court of record of a Class C assault. Villa appealed to Dallas County Criminal Court of Appeals No. 1, which reviews such appeals on the record instead of de novo. Tex. Gov’t Code § 30.00014(a), (b). That court reversed and remanded for a new trial. The State sought appeal in the court of appeals. The court of appeals held that it did not have jurisdiction. It cited Tex. Gov’t Code § 30.00027(a), entitled “Appeals to Courts of Appeals,” which says: “The appellant has the right to appeal to the court of appeals if: (1) the fine assessed against the defendant exceeds $100 and the judgment is affirmed by the appellate court; or (2) the sole issue is the constitutionality of the statute or ordinance on which a conviction is based.” The State was the appellant and neither prerequisite was satisfied. Justice Goldstein dissented. For numerous reasons, she would have held that “appellant” in Section 30.00027(a) refers only to the defendant as an appealing party.
The State’s argument is manifold. The first is plain language; there is no circumstance under which the State would challenge either the affirmance of a conviction or the constitutionality of the offense. Making “appellant” include the State makes little sense. It makes more sense for “appellant” to refer to the party that appealed to the county court—the defendant, in this case. Second, there is no indication that Section 30.00027(a) was intended as a jurisdictional statute; other statutes are more explicit. Third, the holding makes some county courts the court of last resort in criminal matters, but only when the case arises out of a municipal court of record. This not only challenges the Court of Criminal Appeals’s constitutional status as the ultimate criminal court, it does so inconsistently. Fourth, this interpretation interferes with the State’s right of appeal under Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 44.01 and cases from the CCA that applied it in similar settings. Fifth, the holding causes Section 30.00027(a) to conflict with Section 30.00026, which says, “If the appellate court [the county criminal court, in this case] awards a new trial to the appellant, the case stands as if a new trial had been granted by the municipal court of record.” Article 44.01(a)(3) covers that scenario: “The state is entitled to appeal an order of a court in a criminal case if the order . . . grants a new trial[.]” The holding in this case nullifies Section 30.00026’s treatment of a new trial on appeal like a trial court ruling.
