Richard Claude Blais v. The State of Texas

Summary

The Fifth District Court of Appeals of Texas at Dallas reviewed Richard Claude Blais's convictions for intoxication assault causing serious bodily injury and failure to stop and render aid. The court found the Anders appeal frivolous and without merit, granted counsel's motion to withdraw, modified the judgments to correct deadly-weapon, enhancement, and duplicative court-cost entries, and affirmed the judgments as modified.

Holdings

1. The Anders brief satisfied the applicable requirements, the record presented no arguable grounds for appeal, and the appeals were frivolous and without merit.
2. The court may modify the intoxication-assault judgment to replace the erroneous notation of "N/A" with "Yes – A motor vehicle" under the deadly-weapon findings section.
3. A deadly-weapon finding is distinct from a sentence-enhancement finding and should be recorded in the separate deadly-weapon section of the judgment, not as a first enhancement paragraph. The prior aggravated-assault conviction was the sole enhancement paragraph in each case.
4. When two convictions arise from a single criminal action, the defendant may be assessed each court cost or fee only once; therefore, the duplicative $290 award in cause number F-1941137-S had to be deleted.

Questions Presented

1. Whether appointed appellate counsel's Anders brief demonstrated that Blais's appeals were frivolous and without merit.
2. Whether the appellate court should modify the intoxication-assault judgment to reflect the trial court's affirmative deadly-weapon finding.
3. Whether the judgments should be corrected to reflect that the prior aggravated-assault conviction was the sole enhancement paragraph in each case.
4. Whether the judgment in the failure-to-stop-and-render-aid case should be modified to delete duplicative court costs assessed in a single criminal action.

Disposition

affirmed