Armstrong v. State

• Decision Date: 23 August 1987
• Docket Number: No. F-84-848,F-84-848
• Citation: 742 P.2d 565
• Court: United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
• Parties: Andre Lavon ARMSTRONG, Appellant, v. STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee.

Page 565

742 P.2d 565

Andre Lavon ARMSTRONG, Appellant, v. STATE of Oklahoma, Appellee.

No. F-84-848.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma.

Aug. 23, 1987.

As Corrected Sept. 22, 1987.

Gloyd L. McCoy, Asst. Appellant Public Defender, Norman, for appellant.

Michael C. Turpen, Atty. Gen., Tomilou Gentry Liddell, Asst. Atty. Gen., Oklahoma City, for appellee.

OPINION

PARKS, Judge:

Andre Lavon Armstrong, appellant, was tried by jury and convicted of Second Degree Burglary, After Former Conviction of Two or More Felonies, in violation of 21 O.S.1981, § 1435, and 21 O.S.1981, § 51(B), in Case No. CRF-84-943, in the District Court of Oklahoma County, before the Honorable William R. Saied. The jury set punishment at twenty (20) years imprisonment. Judgment and sentence was imposed in accordance with the jury's verdict. We affirm.

During the evening or early morning hours of August 24-25, 1983, the offices of BMD, Inc., were broken into and entry was gained by twisting off the new lock on the front door. When the Credit Manager arrived to open the office on the morning of the 25th, he discovered the break-in and saw that the office had been ransacked. Papers were strewn on the floor and locked desks had been pried open. The cash drawer, which was stored overnight in the credit manager's office, was found some twenty-five feet away near the general manager's office. The cash box had also been pried open. When the police investigator dusted the cash box for fingerprints, he lifted a latent left thumb print from inside the metal cash drawer. The thumb print was positively identified by a fingerprint expert as the appellant's. Missing from the theft was $300 in cash, some $50 to $75 in coins, tools and the company truck. The truck was found minus the battery four weeks later.

For his first assignment of error, the appellant asserts that the State failed to present sufficient evidence to prove the appellant committed the burglary because the only evidence presented by the State linking him to the burglary was the thumb print found inside the cash drawer. The appellant does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to prove the elements of second degree burglary, but only whether the physical evidence found at the scene of the crime, i.e., his thumb print, was sufficient for conviction. The appellant relies on Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), in support of his assignment of error. We adopted the Jackson test, that due process requires a reviewing court to examine the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution in order to determine whether any rational trier of fact could find the essential elements of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt, in Spuehler v. State, 709 P.2d 202, 203-04 (Okl.Cr.1985).

The appellant testified at trial that he "may" have touched the cash box during a previous visit some three weeks earlier when he applied for a job. However, the credit manager testified that he had never seen the appellant before seeing him in court, and the police fingerprint expert testified that the fingerprint found inside the cash drawer was fresh because of the amount of powder it picked up, indicating the print was still moist and newly made. The thumb print was physical evidence placing the appellant on the premises. We have long recognized the validity of fingerprint identification, Campbell v. State, 493 P.2d 1126, 1128 (Okl.Cr.1972), and fingerprint evidence is sufficient to support a conviction for second degree...