Court Opinion

ID: 9857431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:34:11.663729+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:21.776610
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
When first considering appellant’s petition for review I was more concerned about *470disposition of Ms other grounds of error than with sufficiency of evidence adduced to show his guilt — my view being that in reviewing a circumstantial evidence case it is appropriate that judges of this Court grant an appreciable measure of deference to a reasoned determination by a court of appeals that circumstantial evidence is sufficient. Now, however, the majority assays the same evidence against substantially the same tests utilized by the court of appeals1 —and finds it wanting, in that the majority says the evidence is “insufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis except the guilt of the appellant.” (Opinion p. 467.)2
Essentially then, my Brothers on this Court are simply substituting their collective judgment for that of three members of the court of appeals on a matter about which reasonable judges sometimes differ.
My own perception of the role of discretionary review assigned to this Court by recent constitutional amendments and concomitant implementing legislation vis a vis the fourteen courts of appeals is that it is more a “law court” than an appellate arbiter over competing contentions of parties on direct appeal. Article 44.45, Y.A.C.C.P. and Tex.Cr.App. Rule 302(c); see Combs v. State, 643 S.W.2d 709, 714-717 (Tex.Cr.App.1982). Thus, in a circumstantial evidence case, though called on to do so in a petition for discretionary review, we are not required to reexamine the record of evidentia-ry facts and circumstances for reasonable hypotheses other than guilt — especially when the court of appeals has undertaken that task and has rationally rejected the ones suggested by appellant.3
For these reasons I would not disturb the findings and conclusions of the intermediate court with respect to sufficiency of the circumstantial evidence to support the verdict of guilt rendered by a properly charged jury. Since the majority reverses the judgment for insufficient evidence, my other concerns are mooted.
Therefore, I dissent.
ODOM, J., joins.

. Wilson v. State, 626 S.W.2d 840 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi 1981). Though the court alluded to the “general rule” of appellate review and in that connection cited Ysasaga v. State, 444 S.W.2d 305, 308 (Tex.Cr.App.1969), its overall analysis comports with our traditional sufficiency tests on appeal of a circumstantial evidence case.

. As the author of the panel opinion in Sewell v. State, 578 S.W.2d 131 (Tex.Cr.App.1979)—discussed by the majority and concurring opinions — and a member of the panel that decided Girard v. State, 631 S.W.2d 162 (Tex.Cr.App.1982), I fully agree with statements of law of circumstantial evidence in other opinions in this cause, and their application in the cases cited. Indeed, attention is invited to application of those principles in Girard v. State, supra, at 164: “The correct procedure involves accepting the inculpatory circumstances ... and then asking if there is a reasonable hypothesis other than guilt which also would account for such circumstances.” As I understand the opinion of the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals, that is precisely how it treated appellant’s contention that “the evidence fails to exclude the possibility that appellant’s female companion took the rings,” 626 S.W.2d at 842.

.Appellant’s female companion bought the water color paint on a Saturday, and she received a yellow copy of the sales slip. Suspicions aroused by their conduct, a store owner immediately determined one ring was gone; two days later, on Monday, an inventory revealed a second ring could not be accounted for. Thus, two rings were missing when appellant came in Monday evening with the altered sales slip copy, the two jars of paint and two rings, asserting the paint his wife had purchased was not the right color and, according to the majority opinion, claiming also that “he had purchased [the two rings] from the store.” It seems to me that a permissible rational inference — if not a logically necessary one — is that appellant presented and sought a refund for the only two rings missing after his presence in the store on Saturday when just the water color paint was bought, particularly since it is undisputed that while in the store on Saturday he did not purchase any rings. Similarly, his own possession of the rings and his claim of right to them, along with his other representations, would seem to rule out any hypothesis that his companion, without his aid or participation, had stolen them.