Stephenson v. State, 14747.

• Decision Date: 27 January 1932
• Docket Number: No. 14747.,14747.
• Citation: 46 S.W.2d 978
• Parties: STEPHENSON v. STATE.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

46 S.W.2d 978

STEPHENSON v. STATE.

No. 14747.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

January 27, 1932.

Rehearing Denied March 9, 1932.

Appeal from District Court, Red River County; R. J. Williams, Judge.

Charlie Stephenson was convicted for possessing intoxicating liquor for purposes of sale, and he appeals.

Affirmed.

T. T. Thompson, of Clarksville, for appellant.

Lloyd W. Davidson, State's Atty., of Austin, for the State.

LATTIMORE, J.

Conviction for possessing intoxicating liquor for purposes of sale; punishment, one year in the penitentiary.

The facts showed that appellant had lived for years with his sister who owned the house. On the occasion in question officers went to the house referred to armed with a warrant for Taylor Stephenson, who appears to have been the son of appellant. It was after midnight when the officers reached the house. They knocked on the door and appellant opened same. The officers went in and told him they were after Taylor, and appellant told them the latter was in bed. The officers told him they had a warrant for him, and Taylor got up and began putting on his clothes. While engaged in dressing he said he wanted to go into another room, and one of the officers went in with him. A lamp was lit in the room first entered, and the officers observed empty jars sitting about; one of them suggested to appellant that they would like to look around to see if they could find any liquor, to which appellant replied, "All right." The officers looked in a cupboard which they found full of jars, also empty jars under the bed. They looked in a trunk and found several empty pint bottles, appellant stating that this trunk had belonged to his dead wife. There was another trunk in the room which the officers tried to open, but found it locked. Appellant was in his nightclothes. The officers asked him where the key was to the locked trunk, and appellant began looking for the key, and, as they said, "blundering around there a little bit." The officers asked him if he did not know where the key was, and he said he thought he did, and finally he looked under the head of the bed and got out his pants, and put them on, and got the key out of a pocket of said pants. They testified that he fooled and fooled with the trunk and appeared unable to get it unlocked, and finally one of the officers flashed his light down there, and when appellant unlocked the trunk and raised the lid he said "Here, I guess, is what you are looking for," and they found in the trunk four pints of whisky. They put a label on it, showing the date, etc. Every thing showed appellant to have been sleeping in the bed, under the head of which his pants were, at the time the officers went into the house. Upon cross-examination of this witness an effort seems to have been made to induce him to say that the pants in which the key was found might have been those of appellant's son, but the witness refused to so state, and insisted they were the ones appellant put on and wore away from the house at the time. Similar testimony was given by the other officer.

Appellant took the witness stand in his own behalf and testified that the house in question belonged to his sister, and that she had the sole management and control of it, and that the whisky found in the trunk was not his whisky, and that he did not know it was in the trunk. He testified that the key used to unlock said trunk was not in his (appellant's)...