Court Opinion

ID: 9667323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:42:30.102794+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:37.070918
License: Public Domain

WOMACK, J.,
filed a concurring opinion, in which PRICE and JOHNSON, JJ. joined.
I join the opinion of the Court and the substance of its reasoning. I would prefer that the Court did not use the term “affirmative link.”
This term seems to have been used by the Court for the first time in Haynes v. State, 475 S.W.2d 739, 742 (Tex.Cr.App.1971):
Finally, appellant contends that the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict [of guilty of possession of marihuana], He relies on the decisions of this court in Culmore v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 447 S.W.2d 915; Martinez v. State, 170 Tex.Crim. 266, 340 S.W.2d 56; and in Brock v. State, 162 Tex.Crim. 339, 285 S.W.2d 745. Such reliance is misplaced. Those cases require only that an affirmative link be shown between the person accused of possession and the narcotic drug. In the case at bar, such a link was furnished by the envelope found with the marihuana when other circumstances were taken into account. We conclude that the evidence is sufficient to support the judgment.
The precedents that the Haynes Court cited did not require an affirmative link, and they did not use the term or the concept of “affirmative links.” They analyzed the circumstantial evidence of possession in the same way that circumstantial evidence of any element of an offense is analyzed. The evidence doesn’t have to be any more affirmative or linking than circumstantial evidence in any other case. The issue is whether there was evidence of circumstances, in addition to mere pres*167ence, that would adequately justify the conclusion that the defendant knowingly possessed the substance.
Today’s opinion for the Court, and the precedents it discusses, would reach the same result if they were cast in the terms that were used before Haynes. We would be better off if we affirmatively cut the link between our analysis and the term “affirmative link.”