NO. 07-08-0303-CR



IN THE COURT OF APPEALS



FOR THE SEVENTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS



AT AMARILLO



PANEL D



MARCH 24, 2009

______________________________



AARON R. DIAL,



Appellant



v.



THE STATE OF TEXAS,



Appellee

_________________________________



FROM THE 137TH DISTRICT COURT OF LUBBOCK COUNTY;



NO. 2006-413,416; HON. CECIL PURYEAR, PRESIDING

_______________________________



Opinion

_______________________________



Before QUINN, C.J., and CAMPBELL and PIRTLE, JJ.

Aaron R. Dial appeals a judgment revoking his probation and sentencing him to two years confinement in a state jail facility for the offense of possession of a controlled substance. Through two complaints, he apparently argues that 1) the trial court erred in failing to conduct an investigation into whether his plea of guilty to the original offense was voluntary, and 2) the trial court relied upon illegally obtained evidence in finding that appellant failed to identify himself to a police officer. We affirm the judgment.

Issue One � Investigating Voluntariness of Guilty Plea

In a rather rambling discourse, appellant complains about the voluntariness of his guilty plea which resulted in the trial court�s decision to defer the adjudication of his guilt. We are unsure of whether he contends that the plea was involuntary, that he should have been entitled to withdraw his plea, or that the trial court failed to inquire into the voluntariness of his prior plea at the subsequent revocation hearing.
We would ask those appearing before this court to cautiously proofread their briefs for typographicalerrors, improper grammar, and questionable sentence structure. So too would we ask them to note that thelonger a sentence is, the more difficult it is for the reader to understand it. Finally, it also would be wise toremember that the clarity of one�s discourse is much more important than its length.


Close If it is the first, then we have no jurisdiction to consider the dispute via an appeal from an order adjudicating guilt and revoking community supervision. Castillo v. State, No. 01-07-00887-CR, 2008 Tex. App. Lexis 8061 at *2-3 (Tex. App.�Houston [1st Dist.] October 23, 2008, no pet.) (not designated for publication) (and the authorities cited therein).

If it is the second, then the claim was not preserved for appellant did not request leave to withdraw his plea from the trial court. The Court of Criminal Appeals required as much in Mendez v. State, 138 S.W.3d 334, 350 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004).

If it was the third, appellant�s receipt of the statutory admonishments was prima facie evidence that his plea was knowing and voluntary.
Though the appellate record does not contain a transcript of the original plea hearing, the writtenadmonishments containing appellant�s signature appears in the clerk�s record.


Close See Brown v. State, 11 S.W.3d 360, 362 (Tex. App.�Houston [1st Dist.] 2000, pet. ref�d) (holding that the receipt of statutory admonishments is prima facie evidence that the plea is knowing and voluntary). Moreover, without citation to either evidence or authority suggesting that one�s ingestion of cocaine alone impairs his ability to think rationally, perceive the circumstances before him or understand the consequences of his actions, we hesitate to impose on a trial judge the duty contemplated by appellant. See Villareal v. State, 860 S.W.2d 529, 533 (Tex. App. �Corpus Christi 1993, pet. ref�d) (stating the trial court had no duty to sua sponte examine retrospectively the voluntariness of the defendant�s guilty plea even though he was found incompetent at the adjudication hearing).

Issue 2 - Illegal Detention

Via his second issue, appellant attacks the trial court�s finding that he failed to identify himself. Purportedly, the evidence upon which the trial court relied was acquired through an illegal detention. Be that as it may, we do not see how that changes the validity of the decision to revoke. Appellant�s failing to identify himself was only one of many grounds alleged by the State in support of its motion. Moreover, appellant pled true to at least two grounds the validity of which had nothing to do with his misidentifying himself to a police officer. So, even if we were to accept appellant�s protestations about the supposed illegal detention and ignore that finding as a ground supporting revocation, nothing would change. Simply put, the decision to revoke is supported by the other findings about which he utters no complaint. Moore v. State, 605 S.W.2d 924, 926 (Tex. Crim. App. 1980) (stating that only one ground can justify the trial court�s decision to revoke community supervision).

Accordingly, we overrule each issue and affirm the judgment.



Brian Quinn

Chief Justice

Publish.

JAS

Bryant v. State

Bailey C. Moseley Justice
06-08-00037-CR
03-16-2009
Before Morriss, C.J., Carter and Moseley, JJ.
OPINION

The multi-decades-old killings that were the subject of the capital murder conviction from which Billy Ray Bryant prosecutes this appeal evoke the kind of complicated and lurid story lines which might be seen in serialized prime-time soap operas. Perhaps if some of the participants in this drama had been named Ewing, we might otherwise believe the facts of this case to be an outline for a script from the 1980s Dallas television series, rather than a real capital murder appeal.

The background of this case involves one poor family that lives basically hand-to-mouth (much like the Barnes clan) and another relatively rich family that owns a ranch and cattle (much like the Ewings, but on a much smaller scale of wealth). The tales of violent murder are mixed with suggestions of wife swapping, insurance fraud, interstate narcotics and weapons trafficking, lying murder accomplices, dying medical examiners, the Texas Rangers, the Secret Service, the Aryan Brotherhood, and (unsurprisingly) extreme family estrangement. At one point, even the trial judge, the Honorable John F. Miller, Jr., suggested that the jurors consider writing a book about this case because its factual twists and turns might make the plot of an interesting novel.

No. 06-08-00126-CR


ANTONIO MARQUISE JACKSON, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee


Opinion by Justice Moseley

O P I N I O N

An excess of post-adolescent testosterone, a lack of discretion, and rampant bravado can combine to create a toxic brew which destroys those who partake of it. In this circumstance, this kind of poisonous concoction resulted in the death of Justin Berry and the conviction by a jury of Antonio Marquise Jackson of manslaughter, for which Jackson was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and fined $10,000.00.