Court Opinion

ID: 9784436
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:44:41.308352+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:54.539575
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent from the majority opinion because, based on the reasoning of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Stewart v. State,1 the evidence is insufficient to support Appellant’s conviction.
The underlying offense was evading arrest or detention in an automobile. Appellant did not hide the automobile or change it in any way. The police were able to thoroughly search the automobile to see if any additional offenses were being committed. The automobile was not offered into evidence during any official proceeding.
As the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals explained in Stewart, a marihuana possession case in which the defendant police officer gave a bud of marihuana to the suspect, thinking she would become a valuable informant,
A person commits the offense of tampering with evidence if, knowing that an investigation or official proceeding is pending or in progress, he ... alters, destroys, or conceals any record, document or thing with intent to impair its verity, legibility, or availability as evidence in the investigation or official proceeding. “Intent” and “knowledge” are two different culpable mental states. The tampering with evidence statute requires intent as to a particular result, namely, impairing a thing’s availability as evidence. A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect ... to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to ... cause the result. By contrast: A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to a result of his conduct when he is aware that his conduct is reasonably certain to cause the result.
It is not enough that appellant knew that his action would impair the availability of the marihuana as evidence. He must have intended to impair its availability. That is, impairing the marihuana’s availability as evidence must have been appellant’s conscious objective or desire. The court of appeals erred in *837analyzing the sufficiency of the evidence for the culpable mental state of knowledge when the statute proscribes the higher culpable mental state of intent.
Moreover, the evidence appears to be legally insufficient to show that appellant had the conscious objective or desire to impair the availability of the marihuana as evidence. The missing marihuana bud would not have changed the category of the offense, and the remaining marihuana was certainly enough to convict Lavender, if the State was interested in pursuing a prosecution. Indeed, appellant’s conduct appears to have been motivated by the belief that Lavender would escape prosecution by becoming an informant, and as a result, the entire quantity of marihuana would be destroyed anyway. That does not mean appellant did nothing wrong. At the very least, he appears to have committed the Class B misdemeanor offense of delivery of marihuana. But that was not the offense he was charged with.2
Similarly, in the case now before this court, moving the car would not have changed anything about the evading-in-an-automobile offense. No one told Appellant not to move the automobile. No one testified that Appellant did anything that would have affected the State’s ability to prosecute the underlying offense. There is no evidence of any attempt to hide the automobile or to change it in any way. There was no testimony of any need to search the automobile in order to prove the offense of evading arrest or detention in an automobile. Automobiles are not brought to court and offered into evidence in evading-in-an-automobile trials.
Nothing Appellant did could have affected the State’s ability to prosecute the case. Nor is there any evidence that she intended to affect the State’s ability to prosecute the case or that she had any knowledge that moving the car could affect the State’s ability to prosecute the case.
I therefore must respectfully dissent.

. 240 S.W.3d 872, 873-74 (Tex.Crim.App.2007).

. Id. (internal citations and quotation marks omitted).