First time for me to have this happen. Defendant wants to plead guilty to a jury and have jury access punishment on a State Jail felony. He obviously wants probation, I don't want to offer it. It's a Burglary of a Building so no automatic prob.

My question is if Def. pleds guilty in front of jury does the jury have to be charged and return a verdict of guilty or does the court send the jury back after only charging the jury on punishment? I know evidence must accompany a def.'s plea in front of a judge but what about a jury? In other words is it a bifurcated trial or not?

I plan on putting on evidence any way but working on the charge I'm thinking from several years past that the judge can send the jury straight into punishment...

See page 25 of The Perfect Plea (2008 edition), addressing plea of guilty to a jury. Judge instructs jury to find defendant guilty and determine punishment, all in unitary proceeding.

Once there is a plea of guilty, whether to a jury or a judge, the trial becomes a unitary proceeding. Carroll v. State, 975 SW2d 630, 631 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998). The only issue to be determined at that point is punishment. You just proceed with the punishment hearing and the jury's verdict will read something like "We the jury find the defendant guilty of burglary and assess his punishment at ____."