AMIE, WILLIE LEE JR. Appeal from Criminal District Court 2 of Tarrant County (original per curiam)
Annotate this Case
Download PDF
IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TEXAS NOS. PD-0253-16 & PD-0254-16 WILLIE LEE AMIE, JR., Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS ON APPELLANT’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW FROM THE SECOND COURT OF APPEALS TARRANT COUNTY Per curiam. Y EARY, J., filed a dissenting opinion. OPINION Appellant was convicted of two counts of robbery and sentenced to fifteen years in prison in each count, to run concurrently. On appeal, Appellant claimed that the Consolidated Court Cost fee imposed pursuant to Local Government Code § 133.102(a)(1) was facially unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals held that this claim was not preserved AMIE, NOS. PD-253-16 & PD-254-16 for review because Appellant did not object to the imposition of the fee before the trial court. In the alternative, it found the claim meritless. Amie v. State, Nos. 02-15-00385-CR & 0215-00386-CR, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 1990 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth February 25, 2016) (not designated for publication). In the context of court-cost challenges, an appellant may not be faulted for failing to object when he or she was not given the opportunity to do so. London v. State, 490 S.W.3d 503, 507 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016). Appellant was entitled to challenge this mandatory court cost for the first time on appeal. This Court recently determined that portions of the Consolidated Court Cost fee – specifically, the abused children’s counseling fee and the comprehensive rehabilitation fee – are unconstitutional as a violation of the Separation of Powers Clause of the Texas Constitution. Salinas v. State, 523 S.W.3d 103 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017). Pursuant to Salinas, the $133 consolidated court costs should be reduced pro rata by the percentage allocated to these impermissible accounts. The combined percentage attributable to these accounts under the statute is 9.8306 percent. That percentage of the $133 fee assessed in Appellant’s case is $13.07. Subtracting this amount from the $133 yields a fee of $119.93. We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals with respect to the issue of court costs, and we modify the trial court’s judgment to change the $133 consolidated fee to $119.93. DATE DELIVERED: November 15, 2017 DO NOT PUBLISH
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
