Dissenting opinion issued August 8, 2019 In The Court of Appeals For The First District of Texas ———————————— NO. 01-18-00863-CR ——————————— CHARLES LEE FARRIS, JR., Appellant V. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee On Appeal from the 184th District Court Harris County, Texas Trial Court Case No. 1530897 DISSENTING OPINION Article I, section 10 of the Texas Constitution declares: “In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have a speedy public trial by an impartial jury.” This provision originated in the 1836 Texas Declaration of Rights and remains in the Texas Constitution to this day. See John Cornyn, The Roots of the Texas Constitution: Settlement to Statehood, 26 TEX. TECH. L. REV. 1089, 1096 (1995) [hereinafter Roots]; Whitney R. Harris, Jury Trial in Civil Cases—A Problem in Constitutional Interpretation, 7 SW. L.J. 1, 2–3 & n.5 (1953). Neither the Texas Legislature nor the Court of Criminal Appeals has directly confronted section 10’s clear and absolute mandate. Instead, Texas courts have interpreted article I, section 15—the general right to trial by jury applicable to both criminal and civil proceedings—in a way that ignores section 10’s distinct guarantee. That interpretation, which the majority believes requires it to reject Farris’s appeal, is not faithful to its plain language, its historical purpose, or its meaning in the context of the Constitution as a whole. I. Plain Meaning: Article I, Section 10 is an Absolute Mandate The Court of Criminal Appeals has failed to address section 10’s plain language, despite its stated adherence to the principle of interpretation—endorsed by the legislature—that courts should focus on the literal text of a provision in order to determine its meaning and resort to other means only when the literal text is unclear or its application would lead to absurd results. See Stine v. State, 908 S.W.2d 429, 431 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995) (citing Hernandez v. State, 861 S.W.2d 908, 909 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993), and Boykin v. State, 818 S.W.2d 782, 785 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991)); see, also TEX. GOV’T CODE § 311.016 (“‘Shall’ imposes a duty.”). The rule of interpretation that the specific provision prevails over the general also requires 2 adherence to article 1, section 10’s mandate in Old Code felony cases. See, e.g., Hatch v. State, 958 S.W.2d 813, 823 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997) (Overstreet, J., dissenting) (disagreeing with the majority’s application of a Government Code provision over the Code of Criminal Procedure provision that adequately addressed the specific issue of jury composition in criminal cases). II. Historical Purpose of Article I, Section 10 Both high Courts in this State have expressed the importance of interpreting the contours of a constitutional right by examining its origin in historical context. See Ex parte Garner, 246 S.W. 371, 371 (Tex. Crim. App. 1922) (Texas Constitution’s right to jury trial under article I, section 15 must be understood in historical context); accord Tex. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n v. Garcia, 893 S.W.2d 504, 526 (Tex. 1995) (concluding that the right to trial by jury under article I, section 15 of the Texas ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals