Texas v. West (original by judge walker)
Annotate this CaseAppellee Timothy West was charged with three counts of knowingly possessing or attempting to obtain the drug Tramadol by misrepresentation, fraud, forgery, deception, or subterfuge. The indictment alleged that the three counts were committed on or about January 21, 2015; April 2, 2015; and June 5, 2015. On June 5, 2018, three years to the day after the last alleged offense, the State refiled the indictment against Appellee, containing the same allegations word-for-word except that the alleged drug was changed from Tramadol to Oxycodone, and the State filed a motion to dismiss the original indictment which was granted on June 13. Appellee moved to quash the second indictment, and, in a June 21 hearing, the trial court granted the motion because the second indictment lacked tolling paragraphs. On June 26, more than three years after the alleged offenses, the State filed a third indictment containing the same allegations but also including tolling paragraphs as to each count. The trial court granted Appellee’s motion to quash the third indictment. The State appealed, and the court of appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling granting the motion to quash. The court of appeals concluded that the statute of limitations was tolled by the pendency of the first indictment which had alleged Tramadol. The issue this case presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' review was whether the statute of limitations was tolled by the pendency of an initial indictment charging a completely different drug than the subsequent indictment and charging not only possession, but also attempting to possess that drug by all of the possible statutory manners and means. The court of appeals concluded that, although the drugs alleged were different, both indictments employed the same language mirroring the statute, and therefore the statute of limitations was tolled. The Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed and reversed the court of appeals: "the 'gravamen of law-offending conduct' in each indictment was not necessarily the same. ... the subsequent indictment does not necessarily charge the same act, conduct, or transaction as the first. The statute of limitations was not tolled, and the trial court did not err when it granted Appellee’s motion to quash."
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