Bennett v. State
| Decision Date | 16 September 1968 |
| Parties | Harold BENNETT, Plaintiff in Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant in Error. |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals |
Jack E. Vaughan, Johnson City, for plaintiff in error.
George F. McCanless, Atty. Gen. of Tennessee, Thomas E. Fox, Deputy Atty. Gen., Nashville, Tenn., Lewis W. May, Dist. Atty. Gen., Mountain City, Tenn., for defendant in error.
Harold Bennett, the plaintiff in error and defendant below, was convicted in the Criminal Court of Washington County of receiving and concealing stolen property valued at less than $100, and was sentenced to imprisonment in the County Workhouse for 11 months and 29 days. His motion for a new trial being overruled, he prayed and was granted and has perfected an appeal in the nature of a writ of error to this Court.
The defendant adopts his motion for a new trial as his Assignments of Error in this Court. In our view of the case it is only necessary to notice and consider the first two Assignments challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. In reviewing the evidence under these two Assignments of Error, we are bound by the rule, stated and restated over and over by our Supreme Court, that a jury's verdict of guilt, approved by the trial judge, accredits the testimony of the witnesses for the State and resolves all conflicts in the evidence in favor of and establishes the State's theory of the case. Under such a verdict, the presumption of innocence, which the law accords an accused prior to conviction, disappears and is replaced by a presumption of guilt which puts upon him the burden of showing upon appeal that the evidence preponderates against the verdict and in favor of his innocence. We may review the evidence only to determine whether it preponderates against the verdict and, in doing so, we must take the verdict as having established the credibility of the State's witnesses. The verdict will be disturbed on the facts only if the evidence clearly preponderates against it and in favor of the innocence of the accused. Pryor v. State, 217 Tenn. 695, 400 S.W.2d 700; Monts v. State, 218 Tenn. 31, 400 S.W.2d 722; Patterson v. State, 218 Tenn. 80, 400 S.W.2d 743; Carroll v. State, 212 Tenn. 464, 370 S.W.2d 523; McBee v. State, 213 Tenn. 15, 372 S.W.2d 173; Kirby v. State, 214 Tenn. 296, 379 S.W.2d 780; Gann v. State, 214 Tenn. 711, 383 S.W.2d 32.
The rule that the credibility of the witnesses and conflicts in the testimony are all settled by the verdict of the jury, 'makes unnecessary and, indeed, inappropriate, a detailed discussion of that evidence, pro and con, * * *in stating what we conclude the material facts to be as established by that testimony.' Hargrove v. State, 199 Tenn. 25, 28, 281 S.W.2d 692, 694; Morrison v. State, 217 Tenn. 374, 397 S.W.2d 826, 400 S.W.2d 237.
The indictment charged the defendant with receiving and concealing a portable record player and a slide projector belonging to the Trinity Methodist Church of Knoxville, knowing the same to have been stolen, and with the intent to deprive the true owner thereof.
The pastor of Trinity Methodist Church identified the record player and slide projector in court, and testified that this equipment belonged to the Trinity Methodist Church and disappeared when the church was burglarized in September 1966, and that the value of the two items was approximately $130.
The property in question was found in the defendant's home in Johnson City, Tennessee by officers armed with a search warrant, the defendant's objections to which are pretermitted.
There is not a word of proof in this entire record that the defendant knew that these items were stolen property. One of the officers testified under cross-examination by defense counsel that he was told by an informer that the defendant bought the property at his own home 'from two thieves from Knoxville.' The other officer, advised by defense counsel during cross-examination that 'I don't want hearsay,' testified that all he knew about the defendant's receiving the property was what two unnamed Police Department informers told him. Thus, there is no competent evidence, none whatever, to show where or when the defendant got the property or that he had any knowledge that it had been stolen. Even if it be accepted that he bought it from 'two thieves from Knoxville,' this record is devoid of any evidence that he knew or should have known that they were thieves or that they or anyone else had stolen the property, or that he had any intent to deprive the true owner thereof. In the absence of any evidence of such guilty knowledge, which...
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Meade v. State
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