Vasquez v. State

In Vasquez v. State, 712 S.W.2d 754, 755 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986), the Court stated that entering a cumulation order in a written judgment which had not been orally pronounced to the defendant at his sentencing rendered the judgment "void." The Court's use of the term "void" in that context was simply a shorthand rendition of a longer legal proposition: a defendant is constitutionally entitled to due process. At a bare minimum, due process requires that a defendant be given notice of the punishment to which he has been sentenced. To orally pronounce one sentence to a defendant's face and then to sign a written judgment more than a month later, when the defendant is not present, that embodies an extravagantly different and more severe sentence than the oral sentence, violates any notion of constitutional due process and fair notice. A defendant has a due process "legitimate expectation" that the sentence he heard orally pronounced in the courtroom is the same sentence that he will be required to serve.