Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

635 S.W.2d 710

Foster v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · decided 1982-07-21

Relies on Burks v. United States · Greene v. Massey · Standley v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1982-07-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently April 2009 · most notably Johnson v. State (2000), Van Hoang v. State (1993)

38 state decisions

220198219902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1*711OPINION

DALLY, Judge.

¶2This is an appeal from a conviction for the possession of cocaine; the punishment is imprisonment for six years and a fine of $1,000, probated.

¶3The indictment alleges that on or about August 24,1977, the appellant “intentionally and knowingly possess[ed] a controlled substance, namely, cocaine.” At the time alleged cocaine was not specifically named in the penalty group of the Controlled Substance Act. The pleading fails to allege an offense; such a pleading in Crowl v. State, 611 S.W.2d 59 (Tex.Cr.App.1981) was held to be fundamentally defective. Since the pleading is fundamentally defective the court did not have jurisdiction; Daniels v. State, 573 S.W.2d 21 (Tex.Cr.App.1978); Standley v. State, 517 S.W.2d 538 (Tex.Cr.App.1975). The appellant’s argument that jeopardy attached is without merit. Ward v. State, 520 S.W.2d 395 (Tex. Cr.App.1975); Hill v. State, 171 S.W.2d 880 (Tex.Cr.App.1943).

¶4Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978) and Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19, 98 S.Ct. 2151, 57 L.Ed.2d 15 (1978) cited and relied upon by the appellant are not in point. In those cases the Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to decide whether a defendant may be retried after his conviction has been reversed by an appellate court on the ground that the evidence introduced at a prior trial was insufficient as a matter of law. These were not cases in which the trial court did not have jurisdiction of the particular offense because of a fatally defective pleading.

¶5The judgment is reversed and the indictment is ordered dismissed.

/635/sw2d/710 · .json · Public domain