Second Court of Appeals | Case Summaries

Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued – Week of November 5, 2007

NOTE: Summaries are prepared by the court's staff attorneys and law clerks for public information only and reflect his or her interpretation alone of the facts and legal issues. The summaries are not part of the court's opinion in the case and should not be cited to, quoted, or relied upon as the opinion of the court.

Links to full text of opinions can be accessed by clicking the cause number then clicking View HTML Version of Opinion.

Floyd Edgar Hutson v. Tri-County Properties, LLC, No. 02-06-00349-CV (Nov. 8, 2007) (Dauphinot, J., joined by Walker and McCoy, JJ.).: Held: The Texas Constitution does not require that the terms “homestead” and “residence homestead” be defined the same, and the legislature was free to provide a definition for “residence homestead” that is different from the constitution’s definition of “homestead.” The trial court therefore did not err by relying on the definition of “residence homestead” in the tax code rather than the definition of “homestead” found in the property code in determining that Hutson did not timely redeem his property after it was sold in a tax sale.
Chindaphone v. State, No. 02-07-00099-CR (Nov. 8, 2007) (Walker, J., joined by Livingston, J.; Dauphinot, J., dissents with opinion).: Held: The evidence was sufficient to support Appellant’s conviction where he executed (1) a judicial confession stating that he had read the indictment and had committed each and every act alleged therein and (2) a waiver, signed by the trial court, whereby Appellant consented to the trial court’s taking judicial notice of his judicial confession, and the trial court stated that it took judicial notice of the document. Thus, the judicial confession, judicially noticed by the trial court with Appellant’s consent, standing alone was sufficient to support Appellant’s guilty plea under article 1.15 of the code of criminal procedure.; Dissent: Because the reporter’s record shows that the judicial confession was neither admitted into evidence nor judicially noticed, the evidence is legally insufficient to support the conviction.