Candace Delores Rios v. the State of Texas

IN THE
TENTH COURT OF APPEALS
No. 10-21-00266-CR
CANDACE DELORES RIOS,
Appellant
v.
THE STATE OF TEXAS,
Appellee
From the 19th District Court
McLennan County, Texas
Trial Court No. 2016-20-C1
DISSENTING OPINION
The only “properly” Certified Bill of Costs in this appellate record that I have been
able to find is in the amount of $505.00 with the entire amount showing as due. (CR 95).
The Court references certified copies of a document labeled as a Bill of Costs dated after
the abatement order as a Certified Bill of Costs. I do not believe that it is properly
certified. It is merely certified as a true and correct copy of a document in the District
Clerk’s file. That, alone, does not make it a Certified Bill of Costs. See TEX. CODE CRIM.
PROC. art. 103.006; Johnson v. State, 423 S.W.3d 385, 392-93 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014)
(discussing the characteristics of a bill of costs according to the statutes). Specifically, the
document which is being certified as a true and correct copy does not contain the
certification regarding the content of the document, like the one referenced above at page
95 of the Clerk’s Record, for which the signatory attested:
I hereby certify the above to be a correct account of the cost chargeable in
the above entitled and numbered cause up to this date.
Moreover, the judgment from which this appeal was taken, including the “Order
to Withdraw Funds” inversely incorporated into the judgment, assesses $475.00 of “Court
costs, fees, and/or fines and/or restitution. . . .” Until that judgment is corrected, or that
amount is paid, there remains a live issue regarding the proper amount of such court
costs in this appeal. Thus, whatever the referenced document is, it does not moot this
issue.
Finally, as to costs, the manner in which we arrived at this point, via an abatement
of the appeal and a remand to the trial court to review the assessment of mandatory court
costs, remains subject to questions of its applicability and whether it was appropriate. See
Carnley v. State, No. 10-21-00104-CR, 2023 Tex. App. Lexis 8896, *4-46 (Tex. App.—Waco
Nov. 30, 2023) (publish) (Gray, C.J., dissenting). Nevertheless, and regardless of the
outcome of that question, the fact remains that Rios has a judgment which appears to
assess $475.00 of court costs against her, and she is entitled to a resolution of the issue as
raised in the appeal regarding whether that amount is correct even if she has paid some
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portion of the court costs. 1
Accordingly, I cannot join the Court’s opinion or judgment and must respectfully
dissent. 2
TOM GRAY
Chief Justice
Dissent delivered and filed December 14, 2023
1
It does not appear that Rios was given the opportunity to respond to the jurisdictional mootness
argument. Moreover, I note that if the funds were withdrawn from her inmate account based upon the
withholding order, payment of the assessed court costs could hardly be said to be voluntary.
2
The irony in this appeal is that after abatement, on remand to the trial court, the appellant convinced the
trial court that it had erroneously used the costs applicable to an offense that occurred on or after January
1, 2020, when it should have used an older costs statute because the offense occurred in 2015. The trial
court, to correct its perceived error, used the costs schedule applicable at the time the offense was
committed. But the Court, with one justice dissenting, has held that for an offense committed in 2015 but
for which guilt and punishment was determined on or after January 1, 2020, the new costs schedule should
be utilized. See Bradshaw v. State, 675 S.W.3d 78 (Tex. App.—Waco 2023, pet. filed).
Rios v. State Page 3