Medrano v. State

Full title: ISMAEL MEZA MEDRANO, Appellant, v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee.

Court: Court of Appeals of Texas, Thirteenth District, Corpus Christi-Edinburg

Date published: Jun 4, 2024

No. 13-23-00140-CR (Tex. App. Jun. 4, 2024)

Opinion

13-23-00140-CR

06-04-2024

ISMAEL MEZA MEDRANO, Appellant, v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee.

Per Curiam

Do not publish. Tex.R.App.P. 47.2(b).

ON APPEAL FROM THE 139TH DISTRICT COURT OF HIDALGO COUNTY, TEXAS

Before Chief Justice Contreras and Justices Tijerina and Peña

ORDER OF ABATEMENT

Per Curiam

Appellant Ismael Meza Medrano appeals his conviction for murder, a first-degree felony. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 19.02(c). Before trial, appellant filed a motion to suppress a video-recorded confession he made to an investigator at the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Department. Appellant agued the confession was inadmissible because it was not made voluntarily. After a hearing on March 13, 2023, the trial court implicitly denied the motion to suppress, and the statement was admitted at trial. However, the record contains no written findings of facts or conclusions of law concerning the trial court's ruling.

Article 38.22, § 6 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure states in relevant part:

In all cases where a question is raised as to the voluntariness of a statement of an accused, the court must make an independent finding in the absence of the jury as to whether the statement was made under voluntary conditions. If the statement has been found to have been voluntarily made and held admissible as a matter of law and fact by the court in a hearing in the absence of the jury, the court must enter an order stating its conclusion as to whether or not the statement was voluntarily made, along with the specific finding of facts upon which the conclusion was based, which order shall be filed among the papers of the cause.

Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22, § 6. The court of criminal appeals has held that this statute "requires written findings even when they are not requested because written findings are required in all cases concerning voluntariness and the statute has no exceptions." Sandoval v. State, 665 S.W.3d 496, 520 (Tex. Crim. App. 2022), cert. denied, 144 S.Ct. 1166 (2024) (internal citations omitted). Thus, a court of appeals errs by not abating for the requisite findings, even where neither party requested written findings at any level of the proceedings. See id.

Accordingly, we abate the appeal and remand the cause to the trial court for entry of findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding appellant's motion to suppress. The findings and conclusions shall specifically state whether the denial of the motion to suppress was based on a finding that appellant's video-recorded confession was voluntarily made. If so, the trial court shall enter an order in accordance with the statute. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22, § 6. If the trial court determines that the denial of the motion to suppress was not based on a finding that appellant's confession was voluntarily made, but was rather based on some other legal rationale, the trial court shall set forth that determination in a written order.

The trial court shall enter an order as directed herein and cause the order to be filed as a supplemental clerk's record with the Clerk of this Court within thirty (30) days from the date of this order. The appeal will be reinstated upon receipt of the supplemental clerk's record, and upon further order of this Court.