Opinion
NO. WR-89,805-01
10-02-2019
IN RE Ricky Lynn JONES, Relator
Motion for leave to file denied.
DISSENTING OPINION
Yeary, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
The Court today denies Relator leave to file an application for writ of mandamus without written order. In his application, Relator asks this Court to order the Montgomery County District Clerk to provide a cost estimate for his trial transcript. I write separately because, in my view, our precedents do not clarify the district clerk's duty set out in In re Bonilla , 424 S.W.3d 528, 533 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014) (holding that when an inmate makes a request for a cost estimate for preparation of the record from his case, the district clerk must respond to the inmate with an estimate).
Relator has asked this Court to order the Montgomery County District Clerk to provide him with a cost estimate of his "transcript." Before filing his application for mandamus relief, Relator made several attempts to obtain a cost estimate, which is evidenced by the following correspondence between Relator and the Montgomery County District Clerk.
• On January 13, 2019, Relator sent a letter to the Montgomery County District Clerk, in which he stated: "I need to know the cost of my transcript ... I need the whole transcript the county clerk's (notarize[d] ) cop[ies]. Please let me know how much the cost for all this."
• The district clerk responded: "In regards to your request in order to get a copy of your transcript you would have to contact the court so, they can get you in touch with the court reporter. Please be advised that if you are wanting any certified copy of documents within your case it is a $1 per page."
• About a month later, Relator wrote to the district clerk again: "I need to know the cost for my transcripts ... I need the whole transcript."
• The district clerk sent a letter to Relator on the same day, in which she stated: "We have received your request for the transcript of your case. You will need to contact ... [the] Court Reporter ...."
• On April 16, 2019, Relator then wrote to this Court seeking assistance in retrieving a "copy of [his] transcripts." The Relator forwarded the letter to the Montgomery County District Clerk. This Court treated the letter as an application for writ of mandamus.
• The district clerk responded again saying: "We have received your request for a copy of your transcript. If you are wanting the court reporter to prepare for you the entire transcript of your trial/case you will need to write to the 410 District and request the court reporter to prepare your transcript. Their address is .... If you are wanting copies from the District Clerk's Office of the documents in your case, the charge for copies are $1.00 per page."
• The Relator then sent another letter to the Montgomery County District Clerk in which he requested nine documents from the district clerk's file,
but did not include the proper name of the documents.
• In response, the district clerk wrote: "Based on the list of items you want, we would need to know the correct title of each document you are requesting. We can send you the Clerk's Record which is 119 pages. If that is what you are wanting, please send money order payable to MCDC in the amount of $119.00."
On June 12, 2019, this Court ordered the district clerk "to file a response stating whether she received a request from the Relator for a statement of costs for his trial records." The district clerk responded to this Court's order with a copy of Relator's requests and the responses her office returned to Relator. The district clerk said she is "confident they have responded appropriately, accordingly and fulfilled all legal and ethical obligations owed to Relator."
In Bonilla , this Court held that "[a] district clerk must provide information to an imprisoned or confined individual or his agent about the amount it would cost to obtain trial and appellate transcripts so that the individual may then pay for them and use them to pursue an application for a writ of habeas corpus." 424 S.W.3d at 534. In light of that opinion, I argued in In re Ingram , 575 S.W.3d 367, 369 (Tex. Crim. App. 2019) (Yeary, J., concurring), that a general request seeking information on how to obtain trial transcripts ought to be sufficient to invoke the Bonilla requirement that the district clerk respond. My opinion there boiled down to this: I do not believe that an inmate should be required to specifically use magic words like "cost estimate" to trigger the duty identified in Bonilla .
All of that said, at this point, I only accept the command of Bonilla because it is the settled precedent of this Court. No one has argued that it was wrongly decided, and I have no basis, at this juncture, to conclude otherwise. I therefore accept its holding, for now, at face value.
But, in addition to that, the facts of this case raise the issue of what cost estimate the district clerk is required to provide. Does a district clerk need only to give a cost estimate of a transcript that is part of the clerk's record? Or does the language "transcript of his case" found in Bonilla extend to a court reporter's record as well, even one that might not yet have been prepared? Would we require the clerk to obtain an estimate from the court reporter and convey that to the prisoner? And, if the prisoner forwards a check to the district clerk, is it the duty of the district clerk then to both obtain and forward the reporter's record to him? Or is it sufficient that the clerk give the prisoner enough information to contact the court reporter himself and request a reporter's record?
It is worth noting that the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure identify what must be contained in a "Clerk's Record," and then separately what must be contained in a Court "Reporter's Record." Tex. R. App. P. 34. It is unlikely that an inmate untrained in the law would understand the differences between both records.
Because I believe this Court's precedent in Bonilla has placed an unclear duty on district clerks, I would file and set this case for a new opinion. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.