Cooper v. State
| Citation | 509 S.W.2d 865 |
| Decision Date | 05 June 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 48466,48466 |
| Parties | Randolph COOPER, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Texas. Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas |
Stan Brown, Abilene, for appellant.
Ed Paynter, Dist. Atty., Abilene, Jim D. Vollers, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.
REYNOLDS, Commissioner.
Appellant was convicted of the offense of theft of property of the value of over fifty dollars. The punishment assessed by the jury was six years' confinement.
Appellant's contention that it was error to overrule his motion for an instructed verdict does not present a valid ground of error. However, since appellant actually is complaining of the sufficiency of the evidence, the ground will be considered in the context of the evidence presented to the jury.
On the morning of July 26, 1973, Tommy Parkinson, the service manager for Rhodes Auto Service located at North First and Cedar Streets in Abilene, received a check from Frito-Lay, Inc., made payable to Rhodes Auto Service in the sum of $51.86. He placed the unendorsed check on top of a twenty dollar bill in the office cash drawer, which contained between seventy and eighty dollars, and left the office.
At approximately 9:30 that morning, a man, positively identified as appellant by three persons, entered the unoccupied office. Donald Gene Parker, a Rhodes employee working in the shop adjacent to the office, saw appellant lean over the counter toward the cash drawer, draw back his closed fist and put it in his pocket, and then pick up a white piece of paper from the desk and put it in his pocket.
Immediately thereafter, Phillip Berry, another Rhodes employee, entered and appellant said he wanted to see Parkinson about a bumper. Parkinson then came in and, after a dicussion about a bumper, appellant walked out the front door.
Parkinson, at Parker's suggestion, looked in the cash drawer and, except for loose change, found it empty. Parkinson, who had custody, control and possession of the money and check, and not given his permission for appellant, or anyone else, to take the property.
Parkinson and Parker went out the door and Parkinson called to appellant, who had started across the street. Appellant returned and Parker asked to see what appellant had in his pockets. Appellant replied, 'Man, I am going to have to do something about you.' When appellant did not reveal what he had in his pockets, Parkinson entered the store to call the police.
Appellant started across the street. Parker followed. Appellant went to North Second Street and turned right. At North Second and Cedar Streets, Parker saw a police car and, finding the police officer in a store, reported the incident. Leaving the store, Parker ran around the corner of North Second and Cypress Streets, and reached appellant about three-quarters of the way in the block at the time appellant was arrested.
Policeman C. Q. Billings, the arresting officer to whom Parker had reported, ran his hands over appellant to make sure he did not have a weapon. He felt something soft in appellant's front pocket, and the officer thought it might be money. The officer called for detectives and, when they arrived, he escorted appellant to the police station. At the station, a search revealed the $51.86 check in appellant's pocket with his wallet. There was not found in appellant's pocket the money Officer Billings thought he detected at the first search for weapons, and he did not find the money in the police car.
Detective Jack Dieken, one of the detectives responding to Officer Billings' call, retraced the route appellant had taken from Rhodes Auto Service to the place of arrest. In a planter box in front of a store at 202 Cypress Street, Detective Dieken found a book of matches bearing a Rhodes Automotive Service advertisement and thirty dollars in cash, consisting of a twenty dollar bill, a five dollar b...
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Simmons v. State, 1840-02.
...516 N.W.2d 273, 276 (1994) (stating that "[w]e are aware of a minority view, found primarily in Texas cases such as Cooper v. State, 509 S.W.2d 865 (Tex.Crim.App.1974), which would require proof of the sufficiency of funds in the maker's account to determine the value of a stolen check, and......
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Hunt v. State
...the presence of any other persons but appellant. Therefore, we find this case to be controlled by the holdings in Cooper v. State, 509 S.W.2d 865 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); Newton v. State, 509 S.W.2d 610 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); and Ales v. State, 587 S.W.2d 686 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), where the rule was sta......
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Johnson v. State, PD-0197-17
...Family Mortuary. But the fact that Appellant was not the named payee on the cashier's check does not make Simmons distinguishable. In Cooper v. State , the defendant stole a number of bills and an unendorsed check from a cash drawer. Cooper v. State , 509 S.W.2d 865, 866 (Tex. Crim. App. 19......
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96-0951 La.App. 4 Cir. 3/5/97, State v. Harris
...v. U.S., supra. We are [96-0951 La.App. 4 Cir. 4] aware of a minority view, found primarily in Texas cases such as Cooper v. State, 509 S.W.2d 865 (Tex.Crim.App.1974), which would require proof of the sufficiency of funds in the maker's account to determine the value of a stolen check, and ......