In the Court of Criminal Appeals of
Texas
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No. WR-93,622-01
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EX PARTE SHEADRICK LEE JACKSON, Applicant
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On Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus
In Cause No. CR03127 HC-1 In the 6th District Court
Red River County
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YEARY, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
The Court denied relief in this post-conviction application for writ of habeas corpus more than three-and-a-half years ago. But today the Court reopens that writ application and grants relief on the basis of Applicant’s claim of illegal sentence. Applicant’s claim is predicated upon what he says is a faulty enhancement paragraph that contributed to his habitualized sentence. I dissent to the Court’s granting such belated relief for at least three reasons.
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First: Assuming it is ever appropriate to do so, this Court does not typically reopen to reconsider our final disposition of a postconviction application for writ of habeas corpus “absent compelling circumstances.” Ex parte Moreno, 245 S.W.3d 419, 428 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008). We have said before that such a disposition ordinarily “ought not to be disturbed, even in the face of a reasonable and good faith argument that our disposition on original submission was ‘incorrect.’” Id. at 429. But the Court’s per curiam opinion does not even attempt to identify an extraordinary circumstance to justify its action today. It simply announces that a “newly provided record” for the first time demonstrates that Applicant should not have been subjected to “habitual enhancement.” Per Curiam Opinion at 2.
The Court’s opinion provides no explanation for why this “newly provided record” was unavailable before. If it were truly unavailable before, Applicant could have pursued his claim in a subsequent writ application under Section 4 of Article 11.07. See TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 11.07, § 4(a)(1) & 4(c) (permitting claims to be litigated in subsequent writ applications if based on new facts not previously available despite “reasonable diligence”). But if our original disposition was merely “incorrect”—and only “incorrect” in light of Applicant’s failure to previously present the “newly provided record” before now—then that hardly justifies revisiting his claim under Moreno after it has been long ago finally disposed of.
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Second: As I have elsewhere argued, I do not regard most claims of improper enhancement to present genuine issues of “illegal sentence” that should even be cognizable in post-conviction habeas corpus proceedings to begin with. Ex parte Clay, 539 S.W.3d 285, 287 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (Yeary, J., dissenting); Ex parte Pue, 552 S.W.3d 226, 239−40 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (Yeary, J., dissenting); Ex parte Westerman, 570 S.W.3d 731, 732 (Tex. Crim. App. 2019) (Yeary, J., dissenting). Is this, then, the kind of sentence that should be regarded as so glaringly illegal that it should be considered cognizable for the first time in a post-conviction application for the writ of habeas corpus? I think not. That there was nothing glaringly illegal about Applicant’s habitualized sentence when it was imposed is evident from the fact that it has taken Applicant two attempts to establish that one of the alleged enhancement paragraphs in his case might be deficient.
In any event, even if Applicant’s claim should be considered to be a cognizable “illegal sentence” claim, there still remains the question of whether this Court should deal with the claim on “reconsider[ation]” after such a long time (even if it is on our own motion to reconsider, which I consider questionable as we are contemporaneously dismissing a recently filed joint suggestion to reconsider). The truth of the matter is that we only decided to grant reconsideration on our own motion after Applicant and the State suggested that the Court to do so, which our order admits. So, to call
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this a reconsideration on our own motion is a subterfuge.
The Texas Legislature has established conditions under which applicants may pursue subsequent applications for habeas relief. This Court’s authority to consider and reconsider claims made on habeas has thus been specifically cabined according to law. The law does not include an exception for when this Court, independently or otherwise, months, and maybe years later, decides that it might have made a mistake. So, permitting Applicant to obtain relief today, in this “reconsider[ation]” on the Court’s own motion, is simply nothing more than an end-run around Section 4’s abuse-of-the-writ provisions, which should require Applicant to show why he could not have adequately developed the facts previously.
Third: It is far from clear to me that one of the enhancement paragraphs in this case did identify a prior conviction that was deficient for enhancement purposes. The Court today says that one of the offenses alleged “a state jail felony [that] was not available for use as a habitual enhancement.” Per Curiam Opinion at 2. It cites no authority for this proposition.
When the Court has granted relief in the past based on this proposition, however, it has cited Samaripas v. State, 454 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014). See Ex parte Davis, Nos. WR-82,581-02 & -03, 2023 WL 1426818 (Tex. Crim. App. Feb. 1, 2023) (op. not designated for publication) (granting relief on the strength of Samaripas). But
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Samaripas only addressed the relevant question in obvious dicta, in a footnote. 454 S.W.3d at 8, n.5. And in her dissenting opinion in Davis, former Judge Slaughter of this Court presented compelling arguments—arguments that went unrefuted by the Court—why the dicta in the footnote in Samaripas was plainly wrong. Ex parte Davis, 666 S.W.3d 531, 533−541 (Tex. Crim. App. 2023) (Slaughter, J., dissenting).
At that time, I joined the part of Judge Slaughter’s dissent that called for at least “a more thorough and definitive analysis of the relevant statutory provisions.” Id. at 542−43. Even on our original consideration of this case, it would have been equally inappropriate to grant relief without heeding Judge Slaughter’s call.
Post-conviction habeas corpus relief is an extraordinary remedy. The only thing extraordinary about this case is that the Court grants relief without even bothering to explain why reconsideration on our own motion is legal or appropriate, or why our failure to grant relief three and a half years ago was even “incorrect” when considering Judge Slaughter’s substantial arguments to the contrary in Davis.
I dissent.
FILED: September 17, 2026 PUBLISH