Salinas v. State, 485 S.W.3d 222

Orlando Salinas was convicted of injury to an elderly person; the trial court sentenced him to five years and assessed $133 as a consolidated court cost under Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 133.102(a)(1).
Salinas objected to the court cost as facially unconstitutional under the separation-of-powers clause; the trial court overruled his objections.
The Fourteenth Court of Appeals affirmed; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and remanded with instructions to decide whether § 133.102 is facially unconstitutional based solely on the statute’s text.
Section 133.102 requires a $133 court cost for felony convictions and directs the comptroller to allocate proceeds among 14 listed funds (e.g., abused children’s counseling; law enforcement education; comprehensive rehabilitation) with minimum percentage allocations under subsection (e).
The controlling legal question on remand was whether those allocated uses, as written, relate to the administration of the criminal justice system (the Peraza standard), such that the statute can survive a facial challenge.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (Salinas)	Defendant's Argument (State)	Held
Whether § 133.102 is facially unconstitutional under separation of powers	§ 133.102 always operates unconstitutionally because most allocated uses are unrelated to criminal court operations; statute makes courts act as tax collectors (relying on Ex parte Carson)	The statutory allocations, as written, can be characterized as legitimate criminal justice purposes related to administration of the criminal justice system	§ 133.102 is not facially unconstitutional; Salinas failed to show the statute always operates unconstitutionally
Whether Carson’s “necessary or incidental to trial” test controls	Carson requires court costs be necessary or incidental to trials, so § 133.102 fails	Peraza displaced Carson’s test; proper test is whether allocations relate to administration of criminal justice	Peraza governs; Carson’s stricter test was rejected for challenges like this
Whether allocations to abused children’s counseling, law-enforcement education, and comprehensive rehabilitation fail Peraza’s test	These specific allocations are unrelated to criminal-justice administration and therefore unconstitutional	Interconnected statutes and subsectional restrictions show these allocations can be used for legitimate criminal justice purposes	Allocation to these three funds may be constitutionally applied; they relate to administration of the criminal justice system

Ex parte Carson, 159 S.W.2d 126 (Tex. Crim. App. 1942) (invalidated a cost statute as not necessary or incidental to trial and discriminatory)
Peraza v. State, 467 S.W.3d 508 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015) (replaced Carson’s strict necessity test; asks whether allocations relate to administration of criminal justice)
Salinas v. State, 464 S.W.3d 363 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015) (remanded to address facial constitutionality of § 133.102 based on statutory text)
Penright v. State, 477 S.W.3d 494 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2015) (treated § 133.102 allocations as relating to criminal-justice administration)
City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 135 S. Ct. 2443 (U.S. 2015) (facial-challenge framework distinguishing statute text from practical operation)