Barrera, Yohana, et al.

A grand jury returned 81 indictments against Operation Lone Star defendants for the misdemeanor of participating in a riot. The indictments were filed with the county court clerk and contain a deputy county clerk’s file stamp. There are no district clerk file stamps or district court cause numbers. All the indictments were assigned to the same county court at law. Thereafter, the defendants in each of the cases filed a plea to the jurisdiction, alleging there was no transfer order of the cases from the district court as required by statute. The State then obtained a transfer order (signed by the district court) that certified that each of the 81 indictments (identified solely by county court cause numbers) were returned into the district court and ordered them transferred to the county courts. The transfer order has no district court cause number to indicate then-existing district court cases, and it was captioned as being pending “in the grand jury” for the district court. 

At the hearing on jurisdiction, the defendants argued that the indictments should have first been filed in the district court. The State argued that any defects were not jurisdictional and that the proper remedy was to send the indictments back to the grand jury, as provided in a re-transfer provision. The county court judge urged the State to file the cases by information or re-indict the cases. The State did the latter with another set of 59 indictments (which led to a new set of legal issues involving an attachment to the reindictments, now at issue in Zurita et al. v. State). But the State proceeded on the 81 cases where the defendants had already bonded out. The county court judge dismissed the indictments.

The State appealed and re-urged its arguments. The court appeals affirmed the dismissal. It observed that Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 21.26 provides that a district court should order cases transferred “[u]pon the filing of an indictment in the district court which charges an offense over which [it] has no jurisdiction.” Together with the Texas Constitution’s requirement that grand jury indictments be presented to the district court before any transfer, the court of appeals determined that the indictments should have first been presented to the district court. It rejected the State’s argument that, along with the presumption of regularity, it sufficed that the district court’s after-the-fact transfer order certified that the indictments had been “returned” to the district court. The court of appeals held that the statutes require there be a “cause” or “case” in the district court before the transfer and that there was nothing in the record to indicate the district court ever opened the 81 cases. Since the transfer statute requires a certified copy of the proceedings in the district court be sent to the county court, there should have been a record to confirm a proper transfer. Since there was not, the court of appeals held that the record overcame any presumption of regularity. As for remedy, the court of appeals interpreted the re-transfer provision to apply only where a case first had been filed in a district court and been transferred to the wrong court. Also, since the county court had no jurisdiction, it was without power to do any act, including transferring the cases.

The State contends, given the presumption of regularly, the court of appeals erred by placing the burden on the State to show proper district-court presentment. It argues that without proof of the falsity of the transfer order’s assertions or invalidity of the order, it should control and be upheld. The State contends any defects were merely voidable and that century-old caselaw holding that transfer is jurisdictional has been superseded by statutes allowing the county court-at-law judge to sit for the district court and by the 1985 amendments concerning indictment defects. 

In its second issue concerning remedy, the State argues that nothing about the re-transfer provision requires that an indictment first be filed in the district court. It shouldn’t be so interpreted since it addresses just this situation where “a cause has been improvidently transferred to a court which has no jurisdiction of the same.”