Metts v. Texas (original by judge yeary)
Annotate this CaseIn 2004, Appellant Anthony Metts pled guilty to two charges of sexual assault of a child and was placed on deferred adjudication community supervision for each offense. Before Appellant entered his plea, he and a prosecutor representing the State appeared at a status hearing to waive Appellant’s right to a jury trial. The prosecutor later became a district court judge and, nine years later, she adjudicated Appellant guilty and sentenced him to ten years of confinement for each offense. On appeal, Appellant argued for the first time that the trial court’s judgments were void because the judge was constitutionally and statutorily disqualified from presiding over cases in which she had previously acted as counsel for the State. The court of appeals rejected Appellant’s assertions and affirmed the trial court’s judgments. The Court of Criminal Appeals granted Appellant’s petition for discretionary review to consider his contention that the court of appeals erred by holding that the trial judge’s prior involvement in the cases as a prosecutor did not render her constitutionally and statutorily disqualified from adjudicating Appellant’s guilt. Agreeing that the trial judge should have been disqualified, the Court vacated the judgments of the court of appeals and remanded the case for further proceedings.
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