Mason, Paul David

Mason waived his right to appeal when he pleaded open to the trial court and before he was sentenced.  He then appealed.  The Tenth Court noted the waiver and asked Mason for a response.  Mason relied on Ex parte Delaney, which said that a “waiver cannot be knowing and intelligent when potential errors cannot be anticipated and the consequences of the waiver are unknown.”  207 S.W.3d 794, 798 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006).  The Tenth Court dismissed his appeal.

The Court of Criminal Appeals refused Mason’s petition but granted review on its own motion on substantively similar grounds.  The Court previously granted review of this body of law in Carson v. State, 559 S.W.3d 489 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018), but decided the case on the narrower ground that waiver of appeal was explicitly induced by the State’s waiver of jury trial.  Before it again, presumably, are questions including whether a knowing waiver requires perfect knowledge of future events or whether it is enough that Mason knew what he did not know.  See Ex parte Palmberg, 491 S.W.3d 804, 810 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016) (“So long as Applicant was aware that this was still an unknown variable in his prosecution—so long as he knew what he did not know—then he was sufficiently aware of the relevant circumstances surrounding his case.”).