Nguyen v. State

The appellant pleaded guilty to the two counts of injury to a child and was placed on community supervision with a "no contact" order. After his wife initiated contact between the appellant and his daughters, the community supervision was revoked. The court of appeals held that the trial judge had erred in ordering consecutive sentences. Texas Penal Code §3.03(b)(2) does not authorize a trial judge to cumulate sentences when a defendant has not been found guilty of multiple specified sexual offenses, or when he has entered into a plea bargain for non-sexual offenses, regardless of the charges in the original indictment. The court of appeals' judgment is affirmed. Court of Criminal Appeals, No. PD-0260-11, 02-08-2012.

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Cochran, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which Meyers, Price, Womack, Johnson, Hervey and Alcala, JJ., joined. Keller, P.J., and Keasler, J., concurred.

OPINION

We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to decide if Texas Penal Code Section 3.03(b)(2)(B) authorizes a trial judge to order consecutive sentences when a defendant is originally charged with multiple sexual offenses but pleads guilty, pursuant to a plea bargain, to multiple non-sexual offenses.*fn1 Both appellant and the State offer plausible, but conflicting, interpretations of the statute’s text. Because we find that the statutory language is ambiguous, we turn to its legislative history. This history shows that the legislature enacted this provision to ensure that defendants who, pursuant to a plea bargain, are placed on deferred adjudication for certain specified sex offenses are subject to the same requirements, disabilities, and punishments that had previously been applied only to those formally "convicted" of a sex offense. We therefore affirm the judgment of the court of appeals, although for a different reason than that relied upon by the lower court.*fn2

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