Opinion
No. 07-17-00055-CR
09-05-2017
MELISSA GAY JONES, APPELLANT v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLEE
On Appeal from the 100th District Court Childress County, Texas
Trial Court No. 5966, Honorable Stuart Messer, Presiding
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Before QUINN, C.J., and CAMPBELL and PIRTLE, JJ.
Appellant, Melissa Gay Jones, was adjudicated guilty of burglary of a habitation. See TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 30.02(a) (West 2011). On appeal, she raises one issue challenging the proportionality of the sentence imposed. We affirm.
Background
Appellant pled guilty to charges of burglary of a habitation and, in October 2016, was placed on four years' deferred adjudication community supervision. Within a short period of time thereafter, appellant was found to be in possession of controlled substances a number of times and was arrested twice. The State alleged numerous violations of the conditions of her probation in its motion to adjudicate, to all of which she pled true. Ultimately, the trial court found the State's allegations true, found appellant guilty of the second-degree felony of burglary, and sentenced her to eighteen years' imprisonment. On appeal, she contends that said sentence was unreasonable under the circumstances of this case.
Appellant did not raise her current complaint before the trial court when sentence was pronounced or through a motion for new trial. Thus, it was not preserved. See Curry v. State, 910 S.W.2d 490, 497 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995) (en banc) (concluding that appellant failed to preserve argument that sentence was cruel and unusual by failing to object at trial); Little v. State, No. 07-12-00042-CR, 2012 Tex. App. LEXIS 3763, at *1 (Tex. App.—Amarillo May 11, 2012, no pet.) (per curiam) (mem. op., not designated for publication) (holding that appellant waived his complaint about his sentence being excessive when he did not raise it with the trial court). Because appellant has forfeited her complaint, we overrule the issue.
To be clear, appellant does not contend that the sentence imposed was illegal, an error which we may notice without objection. See Mizell v. State, 119 S.W.3d 804, 806 n.6 (Tex. Crim. App. 2003). Indeed, she concedes that the sentence imposed was within the statutory range of punishment for a second-degree felony. See TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 12.33(a) (West 2011). As a general rule, "the sentencer's discretion to impose any punishment within the prescribed range [is] essentially 'unfettered.'" Ex parte Chavez, 213 S.W.3d 320, 323 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). "Subject only to a very limited, 'exceedingly rare,' and somewhat amorphous Eighth Amendment gross-disproportionality review, a punishment that falls within the legislatively prescribed range, and that is based upon the sentencer's informed normative judgment, is unassailable on appeal." Id. at 323-24.
Accordingly, we affirm the trial court's judgment.
Per Curiam Do not publish.