Case ID: tex-ct-app_25/html/0600-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Willson, Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

No. 6078.
    James Tolliver v. The State.
    Theft—Pact Oasb.—See the opinion for a summary of evidence held insufficient to support a conviction for theft.
    Appeal from the County Court of Falls. Tried below before the Hon. John H. Wharton, County Judge.
    This conviction was for theft of an overcoat of less value than twenty dollars. The penalty assessed against the appellant was a fine of ten dollars and confinement in the county jail for three days.
    The opinion sufficiently states the proof.
    P. P. Norwood, for the appellant.
    
      W. L. Davidson, Assistant Attorney General, for the State.
   Willson, Judge.

This conviction is for receiving an overcoat, knowing it to have been stolen. There is no evidence in the record before us to sustain the conviction. Defendant was found in possession of an old, ragged overcoat, which the prosecuting witness identified as a coat which had been stolen from him twelve or thirteen months prior to defendant’s being found in possession thereof.

Opinion delivered June 13, 1888.

There is not a particle of evidence showing, or even tending to show, that the defendant at any time knew that the coat had been stolen. His possession of the coat, even if it was the stolen coat, twelve or thirteen months after the same had been stolen, can not be considered as the possession of recently stolen property, and raises no presumption of guilt against him. In our opinion, the conviction is without any evidence to warrant it, and the judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.

Reversed and remanded.