Court Opinion

ID: 9644282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:52:10.697505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:11.066645
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
MORRISON, Judge.
In our original opinion we said, “The confession played an important part in the establishment of the State’s case.” This is true, but there were several other items of circumstantial evidence not mentioned which tended to connect the appellant with the commission of the crime charged. Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156, 97 L. Ed. 1522. We did not mention the evidence adduced concerning the use of a bloodhound. It was shown that the dog which was brought to the Hilbun home shortly after the assault had been trained to track human beings at our state penitentiary and that his training had continued up until his use on the night in question. Those who had trained the dog gave as their opinion that he was an accurate tracker. The officers at the scene held their investigation in abeyance until the arrival of the dog. While circling the house, the dog picked up a track and followed it to the porch of the house where the appellant was found. Some short while thereafter the dog repeated this performance, leading his master back over the same trail to the same house. This was the only trail discovered by the dog that night.
It was further shown that the investigating officers found a freshly made shoe track leading from the house where appellant was found to the Hilbun home, and the appellant on cross-examination admitted that it was shown to him and that it fit the dimension of his shoes.
It was further shown that the attack took place sometime shortly after midnight, that it had rained between ten o’clock and midnight, and.that when the appellant was apprehended his shoes and the,bottoms of his trousers were wet. We think *655that this was cogent evidence to be considered by the jury in passing upon the appellant’s testimony that he had gone to bed at 7:30 p. m. and had not been out of the house after this until his arrest.
Appellant’s able and forceful counsel has taken us to task for referring to Katie as appellant’s former wife. We find that appellant’s counsel, in examining the accused, asked, “Who is your ex-wife?” to which appellant replied, “Katie.”
Appellant says that there is not a scintilla of evidence that the appellant was hiding at the home of his former wife near the Hilbun home shortly after the assault. The officers testified that the bloodhound led them to Katie’s home, that they asked Katie if the appellant was there, and she said that he was not. This Katie admits. The officers then testified that they entered the home, and during the course of their search thereof attempted to open a closed door, that this door seemed to drag and was hard to open, but that after it had been opened a fraction they saw a colored man’s foot and leg up against the door, and after they got the door completely open there stood the appellant. This spells hiding to us. Nowhere in the record have we found a satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary conduct.
Appellant questions the admissibility of the results of the paraffin test. In a well reasoned opinion by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Commonwealth v. Westwood, 188 Atl. 304), we find the following:
“The unexplained presence of specks of partially burned gunpowder on defendant’s right hand a few hours after the shooting — as chemists found and testified — was, if the jury found such to be the fact, significant. If the victim had been stabbed instead of shot, the unexplained presence shortly thereafter of human blood on the right hand of one who had an opportunity to commit the crime, would have been significant.”
He further questions the qualifications of the officers to administer the test. Sergeant Frank Fazil, with 15 years’ experience on the State Highway Patrol, supervised the placing of the paraffin upon the appellant’s hands. After its removal, it was forwarded to the Texas Department of Public Safety at Austin, where Chemist McDonald made the examination. McDonald, the holder of a Master’s degree in chemistry with further post graduate work and three years’ police experience, described the *656test and testified as to the presence of nitrates. We find nothing inherently unreliable about such tests.
Appellant claims that there is in the record no denial of the appellant’s testimony about threats to do violence to his wife and acts of brutality inflicted upon him by Officer Wash-burn while they were in the Beaumont jail.
Officer Washburn testified that he accompanied Officer New-hill and the appellant to Beaumont for the purpose of making the truth serum test, but that he had other business in Galveston and that when he left Beaumont the appellant was in the doctor’s office. Washburn stated that he did not know whether or not the appellant was carried to jail on this trip to Beaumont and that he was not in Jefferson County at the time appellant claims these things occurred. We consider this a denial that he made any such threats or inflicted any such brutality on such occasion.
Appellant claims that our opinion ignored the testimony of the appellant and his witnesses concerning the missing tooth and scars upon his body. The tenor of their testimony was to the effect that the appellant sustained such injuries while being interrogated by the officers. Two practicing physicians examined the accused during the trial and gave their professional opinions that the appellant had lost his tooth and had sustained a slight scar on his hand long before the date of the commission of the offense and therefore prior to the interrogation by the officers. They testified that they found no other marks upon his body “that were not ordinarily common for a person to have.”
The jury had the right to reject the testimony of the appellant and his witnesses and accept the testimony of the two doctors and the officers.
In connection with the confession, we think it is worthy of note that the appellant testified that he was not afraid of either the prosecutor who took the confession or the two officers who witnessed it. He was questioned concerning each sentence in the main body of the confession. He was then asked if he had told the officers that, and he replied that he had.
Because some of the names of the counties and cities are the same, we make this explanation of appellant’s confinement following his arrest in order to make it clear that the rule in *657Ward v. Texas, supra, was not violated here. The offense occurred in the city of Henderson in Rusk County. Appellant was confined in the jail of that county and for his own protection moved to the jail at Rusk in Cherokee County, which adjoins Rusk County. Other than this, the appellant was carried to Austin and Beaumont so that he might be given scientific tests.
We have recently in the Gasway, Hulen and Paris cases, cited in the original opinion, attempted to show the need and propriety of carrying an accused to the nearest place where scientific tests are available. In this relatively sparsely settled state, such places are few and sometimes far from the scene of the crime. The very nature of the tests themselves is inconsistent with police brutality. Both are designed to ascertain the truth, whether it be favorable or unfavorable to the prosecution. Though we do not consider it as a factor in weighing the sufficiency' of the evidence, we have learned from the many cases which we review that the Texas Department of Public Safety, where the lie detector tests are administered, makes its testimony available to an accused when such tests indicate his innocence.
Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this cause originally, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.