Full Opinion

In The Court of Appeals Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont __________________ NO. 09-25-00526-CR __________________ EX PARTE STEVEN J. STRINGFELLOW __________________________________________________________________ On Appeal from the County Court at Law No. 4 Montgomery County, Texas Trial Cause No. 25-34897 __________________________________________________________________ MEMORANDUM OPINION Steven J. Stringfellow applied for a writ of habeas corpus through which he sought to avoid prosecution on pending criminal charges and arrest on a bench warrant for failure to appear.1 See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 11.09. The trial court denied Stringfellow’s motion to appear remotely. Stringfellow failed to appear for the December 5, 2025 hearing on his petition. Arguing that Stringfellow failed 1 In his application for a writ of habeas corpus, Stringfellow states that he is currently facing charges for misdemeanor offenses of criminal trespass and resisting arrest in Trial Cause Numbers 24-388312 and 24-388313 filed in the County Court at Law Number 4. 1 to identify a cognizable legal claim or defense in his application for a writ of habeas corpus, the State filed a motion to strike the petition as frivolous and asked the trial court to take Stringfellow into custody on an active warrant for failure to appear. The trial court granted the State’s motion to strike the application and denied Stringfellow’s habeas corpus application for lack of prosecution. Stringfellow filed a notice of appeal. In Appellant’s Brief, Stringfellow asserts his pending criminal cases are connected to an eviction that was unlawful because the leased premises were in disrepair. 2 He argues he is “exempt” from the trespassing charge because the landlord voluntarily dismissed the eviction case. Regarding the prosecution for resisting arrest, Stringfellow argues he “did not cause any sort of personal injury to the officers . . . with the resisting arrest charge being tied to the state’s unlawful order against code to vacate the premises in a violation of the FTCA[,]” and he contends 2 Stringfellow appealed the eviction judgment from the justice court that issued the writ of possession to the County Court at Law Number 6 of Montgomery County, which dismissed the entire case as moot after Stringfellow failed to appear for trial de novo and the landlord non-suited his action for rent. See Stringfellow v. Khan, No. 09-24-00385-CV, 2026 WL 2529071, at *1-4 (Tex. App.—Beaumont Aug. 27, 2026, no pet. h.) (mem. op.). We dismissed the appeal as moot. Id at *4. Stringfellow sued the landlord for wrongful eviction in the 284th District Court of Montgomery County but the trial court dismissed the case after Stringfellow failed to appear for a hearing to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for want of prosecution. See Stringfellow v. Khan, No. 09-24-00436-CV, 2026 WL 2529534, at *1-3 (Tex. App.—Beaumont Aug. 27, 2026, no pet. h.) (mem. op.). We affirmed the trial court’s judgment. Id. at *3. 2 he “reflexively pulled away” when “the arresting officer had purposefully injured our hand when we had offered it to him in a normally peaceful fashion to be handcuffed[.]” Stringfellow argues the State confused his “[a]rticle III precedent of federal civilian in government sovereignty with the SovCit [] sovereignty fringe movement” in its motion to strike his application for a writ of habeas corpus. In Appellant’s Brief, Stringfellow does not directly challenge the bench warrants that issued for failure to appear in Trial Cause Numbers 24-388312 and 24-388313. In Appellee’s Brief, the State argues we must dismiss the appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction because Stringfellow’s application failed to identify a claim that is cognizable in pre-trial habeas corpus, the trial court neither issued a writ of habeas corpus nor held an evidentiary hearing on the application, and the trial court struck the application without ruling on the merits. In determining whether an issue is cognizable, the appellate court considers whether the alleged defect would bring into question the trial court’s power to proceed, or if the pretrial writ application asserts constitutional protections that would be effectively undermined if the issues were not cognizable. Ex parte Weise, 55 S.W.3d 617, 619-20 (Tex. Crim. App. 2001). A claim that a criminal statute is unconstitutional as applied to the defendant is generally not cognizable through pretrial habeas corpus. Id. at 620. Furthermore, a claim presenting a hypothetical set of facts that might be presented at trial is not ripe for review and cannot be asserted 3 in a pretrial application for a writ of habeas corpus. See Ex parte Smith, 185 S.W.3d 887, 893 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). Such is the case here. We cannot know what evidence the State may present at trial to support the charging instruments, nor can we ascertain what evidence might be admitted at trial to support a defensive theory. There is no right to an appeal when a trial court refuses to issue a habeas writ or dismisses or denies a habeas application without ruling on the merits of the applicant’s claims. See Ex parte Villanueva, 252 S.W.3d 391, 394-95 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008). Stringfellow was not in custody of the Montgomery County Sheriff on the date of the hearing. No one appeared to present the application or explain how Stringfellow was under unlawful restraint, nor was the unlawfulness of the restraint apparent from the face of the application. The trial court did not rule on the merits of the application, which failed to present a cognizable claim. We overrule the issues presented in Appellant’s Brief and dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. See Tex. R. App. P. 43.2(f). APPEAL DISMISSED. W. SCOTT GOLEMON Chief Justice Submitted on September 25, 2026 Opinion Delivered September 30, 2026 Do Not Publish Before Golemon, C.J., Wright and Chambers, JJ. 4