Marina v. State

• Decision Date: 20 December 1922
• Docket Number: (No. 7396.)
• Citation: 246 S.W. 376
• Parties: MARINA v. STATE.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

246 S.W. 376

MARINA v. STATE.

(No. 7396.)

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

December 20, 1922.

Appeal from District Court, Wichita County; J. W. Akin, Special Judge.

Frank Marina was convicted of theft, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

O. Beauchamp and Bonner, Bonner & Sanford, all of Wichita Falls, for appellant.

R. G. Storey, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

MORROW, P. J.

Conviction is for theft; punishment fixed at confinement in the penitentiary for a period of two years.

The store belonging to the witness Huffines was burglarized at night. Upon entering it the following morning, he discovered the intrusion. As he expressed it, he knew that there was something missing, but was not able to tell just what it was, except that he said:

"I had some hams, and they were gone, and it looked like some cans of salmon were gone."

On the next day he missed a little truck, which he used in the store for moving articles. This he found out on the street, some distance from his place of business, and about a block from the house at which the appellant was arrested. Several days later, the police located some groceries in a house in what was known as "No Man's Land," and, after procuring a search warrant, the witness and the police visited the house. It was occupied by a man named Earl Patterson and his grandmother. The appellant was also there. There were groceries in the house, including sacks of flour, plugs of tobacco, Wichita meal, Spearmint chewing gum, cheese, coffee in packages, bacon, Swift's premium hams, baking powder, and canned salmon. Some of these articles appear to have been hidden. They were all of common brands, and the witness was unable to identify them, further than to say that they were articles such as he carried in his stock.

From the police officer's testimony, when the arrest was made, Patterson was in the yard looking after a horse, his grandmother was in the house, and the appellant was about the premises. Appellant started to leave, but was requested by the officer to remain upon the premises. The grandmother of Patterson testified that the house belonged to the appellant, but was rented by herself and her grandson, Earl Patterson; that sometime before appellant had demanded possession of his house, and a short time before the arrest had occupied one of the rooms there when he was in town; that several days before the arrest appellant brought some groceries to the house in a Ford automobile; that she used some of them with appellant's consent. Earl Patterson had been convicted for the same offense.

Appellant testified to an alibi, and introduced witnesses supporting it. He denied bringing any groceries to the premises, or having any connection with the offense. The evidence is purely circumstantial, and its sufficiency is called in question on this appeal. The leading criminating fact relied upon is the possession of the stolen property. Upon this question, the weakness of the evidence of the identity of the property confronts us. The mere fact that it is of the same kind, in the absence of other surrounding circumstances, is, generally speaking, not sufficient to establish identity. Burrill on Circumstantial Evidence, p. 652. See, also, page 453. In the instant case, the property found on the premises that were searched was of the same kind as that which the witness Huffines kept in his store; but he was not able to testify that he had lost any of the property found, except some hams, and these he could not identify.

The state's reliance for a conviction being upon the circumstance that the appellant was found in possession of the property recently stolen from the burglarized premises, proof of the identity of that property was essential. Branch's Ann. Tex. Penal Code, § 2482....