Opinion
14-23-00047-CV
08-22-2023
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellant v. MICHAEL J. BITGOOD, Appellee
On Appeal from the 240th District Court Fort Bend County, Texas Trial Court Cause No. 22-DCR-101126
Panel Consists of Jewell, Spain, and Wilson Justices.
ORDER
PER CURIAM
Before the court is appellee's motion to dismiss appeal for want of jurisdiction. See Tex. R. App. P. 35.1. The motion disputes alleged defects with the state's notice of appeal.
On October 3, 2022, appellant was indicted for two counts of stalking pursuant to Penal Code section 42.07. Appellant filed a document in which he moved to quash the indictment and applied for habeas corpus relief on November 23, 2022. He subsequently amended that document on November 28, 2022, and he filed a supplement to that document on January 6, 2023. Appellant challenged the entirety of indictment on a variety of grounds, while he solely contested his restraint in his application for habeas corpus relief on the basis that his indictment was fatally defective. On January 26, 2023, an associate judge of the trial court signed a decree expressly granting both the motion to quash the indictment and the requested habeas corpus relief. The State filed a notice of appeal on February 3, 2023, in which it expressly contested the granting of the motion to quash the indictment. The notice of appeal, however, did not mention the trial court's grant of habeas corpus relief. As near as can be determined, neither the presiding judge of the trial court nor any associate judge has since taken any further action regarding the order signed January 26, 2023. Accordingly, that order became the trial court's decree on February 27, 2023, the first weekday falling 30 days after that order was signed. See Tex. Gov't Code Ann. § 54A.013; Tex.R.Civ.P. 4.
Appellant's motion takes issue with both the timing and the form of the State's notice of appeal. Basically, appellant contends that because the notice of appeal was filed before any part of the January 26, 2023 order became the trial court's decree, the notice of appeal is entirely ineffective. And insofar as the notice of appeal does not mention the trial court's grant of habeas corpus relief, this court has no jurisdiction to review that action by the trial court. We reject both challenges.
As previously observed, the notice of appeal was filed before the January 26, 2023 order became the trial court's decree at all. That order only became the trial court's decree after February 27th, after the trial court declined to modify, correct, reject, reverse, or recommit the decree for further information. Tex. Gov't Code Ann. § 54A.013. But even if we assume that the notice of appeal was proper to file only after the trial court implicitly made the January 26, 2023 decree its own decree, that would simply make the notice of appeal premature. And under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 27.1(b), that would make the notice of appeal "effective and deemed filed" on the same day the January 26, 2023 decree became the trial court's decree. See Tex. R. App. P. 27.1(b). Accordingly, we reject appellee's timing-based challenge.
Assuming the notice of appeal had to be filed based solely on when the associate judge signed the decree, it was indisputably timely filed eight days after that order was signed. See Tex. R. App. P. 26.2(b). Accordingly, we do not need to decide here whether the proper time for filing the notice of appeal was after the associate judge signed the order, or after the trial court implicitly made that order its own decree.
Appellant's form-based challenge to the notice of appeal centers on Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 25.2(c)(2), under which in relevant part the State's notice of appeal had to show its "desire to appeal from the judgment or other appealable order." Tex.R.App.P. 25.2(c)(2). But though the notice of appeal solely mentions the portion of the January 26, 2023 order granting the motion to quash the indictment, that sufficiently evinces a desire to appeal from the other portion of the January 26, 2023 order granting habeas relief. The habeas relief, after all, appears to have been granted solely because the trial court quashed the indictment; appellant made no requests in his filings for habeas relief to be granted for any reason aside from the underlying indictment ostensibly being fatally flawed. In a related vein, appellant's merits brief does not contend that he was entitled to habeas relief from the trial court for any reason aside from the alleged invalidity of his indictment. Since the State's notice of appeal expressly challenged the quashing of appellant's indictment, there is implicitly a challenge in that notice of appeal to the grant of habeas relief that depended on appellant's indictment being quashed. Cf. State v. Williams, 90 S.W.3d 913, 917 (Tex. App.- Corpus Christi 2002, no pet.) (holding ambiguity in text of State's notice of appeal as to what was being dismissed did not defeat appellate jurisdiction when it was "apparent from the record" what was being appealed and what the State desired to appeal). Under the unique circumstances of this case, we conclude the notice of appeal sufficiently evinces the State's desire to appeal from the grant of habeas relief. See Harkcom v. State, 484 S.W.3d 432, 434 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016) (acknowledging that right to appeal in criminal case "should not depend upon traipsing through a maze of technicalities," and that "magic words" are not required for proper notice of appeal).
Normally, in a situation in which an appellant is pursuing pretrial merits relief and a related claim for habeas relief, those claims each would be litigated in separate trial court proceedings. See, e.g., Ex parte Hartley, No. 01-18-01124-CR & 01-18-01125-CR, 2022 WL 2976234, at *3 (Tex. App-Houston [1st Dist] July 28, 2022, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication) (resolving interrelated challenges from separate trial court proceedings quashing the indictment of, and granting habeas relief to, the same criminal defendant); see also Greenwell v. Ct. of Appeals for the Thirteenth Jud. Dist, 159 S.W.3d 645, 649-50 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005) (quoting 43A George E. Dix & Robert O. Dawson, Texas Practice: Criminal Practice and Procedure § 47.51, 219-20 (2d ed. 2001)) (discussing how "[a pretrial] habeas corpus action is, in theory, a different litigation than the criminal prosecution"). Consequently, appeals from grants of those relief would necessitate separate notices of appeal, one for each proceeding. However, the instant case involves a party who pursued pretrial merits relief and habeas relief in a single trial court proceeding, thus appealing both grants of relief could be starting simply with one notice of appeal.
For the reasons discussed above, we deny appellee's motion to dismiss.