Court Opinion

ID: 9674132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:23:39.454487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:25.740547
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOE REHEARING
MORRISON, Presiding Judge.
Appellant takes us to task for holding that the conviction for rape can be sustained in the light of prosecutrix’ testimony that the appellant did not do anything to her “not as I knows of.”
Lillian Riley testified that the appellant came home between twelve and two o’clock that morning.
*101Prosecutrix testified that he came home about twelve thirty. She stated that it took about thirty minutes for her to drink the wine and that she then went to sleep.
Helen Horn testified that she heard the noise in the house about two thirty.
When the investigating party got in the house, the prosecutrix was unconscious from intoxication and was vomiting.
Accepting all of prosecutrix’ testimony as true, it seems to logically follow from this chronology of events that the act of rape occurred after the prosecutrix had gone to her own bed and while she was unconscious from intoxication. The muffled female voice heard by Horn would not be at all inconsistent with the above explanation because prosecutrix could have resisted or participated in the act of sexual intercourse and made certain vocal noises while unconscious from intoxication and yet remember nothing of what transpired after she had regained consciousness.
As to the alleged jury misconduct, it should be borne in mind that whenever any article is introduced in evidence the jury certainly have a right to examine and discuss it. In Garza v. State, 156 Texas Cr. Rep. 557, 244 S.W. 2d 817, we had a case in which a pistol was introduced in evidence. The jury in that case clearly had the right to test the trigger pull and discuss it among themselves. Reversible error was reflected only because one of the jurors claimed to be an expert on firearms and told his fellow jurors certain facts not in evidence. In the case at bar, the juror in question laid no claim to possession of special knowledge not possessed by his fellow jurors. Any other rule than the above would unduly hamper discussion of evidence by members of the jury.
Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this cause originally, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.