Court Opinion

ID: 9678642
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:26:38.395723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:06.429340
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION ON STATE’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

KELLER, Judge,
dissenting.
I disagree with the majority for a number of reasons. Primarily, though, I believe that the law of parties is, at most, a definitional matter, sufficient if included in the abstract portion of the court’s charge.
1. Do we even need a parties instruction?
It appears to me first, though, that it may be unnecessary to instruct the jury about the law of parties at all. In 1974 the Legislature enacted See. 7.01 of the Penal Code, subsection (c) of which provides:
All traditional distinctions between accomplices and principals are abolished by this section, and each party to an offense may be charged and convicted without alleging that he acted as a principal or accomplice.
*305We held that this statute plainly meant that an indictment need not allege that a person is accused as a principal or as a party. Pitts v. State, 569 S.W.2d 898 (Tex.Crim.App.1978). All indictments, therefore, in explicitly alleging “personal” liability for an offense, also implicitly allege party liability.
Sec. 7.01(c) treats “charging” an offense the same as it treats “convicting” of an offense — it allows both without an allegation that the accused acted as a party or as a principal. I do not see how an accused can be “convicted without alleging that he acted as a principal or accomplice” if we require that the distinction be made somewhere down the line. It seems plain to me that the law does not require that such a distinction be made in the jury charge. Just as an indictment which alleges personal liability includes an allegation of party liability, a jury charge which allows conviction for personal liability should allow conviction for party liability.
The application paragraph of the charge in this case tracked the language of the indictment. The jury therefore found beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant had committed the exact acts alleged in the indictment. I can think of no other circumstances in which an accused is entitled to be acquitted after a jury finds that he committed acts exactly as alleged in a valid charging instrument.
2. If we need a parties instruction, must it be in the application paragraph?
Moreover, even if it is necessary to inform the jury in some way of the law of parties, the charge in this case did so in the abstract portion. Sufficiency of the evidence is to be measured against the jury charge, which we have interpreted to mean the entire charge. Garrett v. State, 749 S.W.2d 784, 802 (Tex.Crim.App.1986) In all jury charges, we define terms in the abstract portion of a charge in order to allow the jury to incorporate the definitions into the application paragraph. The definition of appropriate,” for instance, appears in the abstract portion of a charge; we do not require that the definition be repeated in the application portion. Similarly, a definition of criminal responsibility sufficiently informs the jury of the law even if it is included only in the abstract portion. It is true that neither the word “parties” nor the term “criminal responsibility” appears in the application paragraph. Nevertheless, the jury in this case was fully informed, via the jury charge, of what the law says regarding liability for an offense. It defies common sense to conclude that the jury did not understand exactly what was required in order for them to find appellant guilty.
3. The defendant benefits if the charge does not contain a parties instruction: so, why should he be permitted to complain on appeal when he did not complain at trial?
Furthermore, it is to the State’s benefit, rather than the defendant’s, that the law of parties be explained to the jury. If the State manages to get a conviction without laying out the law of parties in the application paragraph, why should a defendant benefit? If he has been indicted without reference to party liability and the evidence supports the allegations in the indictment, I do not see why he is entitled to an acquittal.
Normally, a party is not permitted to lie behind the log, fail to object, and reap the benefit by complaining for the first time on appeal.1 The situation in the present case allows a defendant to do that, and worse. A defendant who does not object to an instruction such as the one in the present ease stands to benefit at trial if the jury does not incorporate the definition of criminal responsibility into the application paragraph. If the jurors believe that the application paragraph requires that the accused personally committed the illegal act, he gets an acquittal on the basis of the lack of a parties charge. But then if the jury does not acquit him he is automatically entitled to an acquittal when he *306appeals his conviction. There is something wrong with allowing an accused to position himself for an acquittal at trial by failing to object, and then to guarantee an acquittal on appeal by the same failure. If a defendant wishes to gain the chance of an acquittal in this way at trial, he should not be able to complain later that the evidence is insufficient.
The majority fears that ratifying the State’s position in this case would dramatically undermine the general principles of law relating to jury charges. This just is not so. The principles I advance today apply only in the framework of principal and accomplice liability, because it is only in that context that the legislature has enacted a statute whereby a straightforward principal-liability indictment also always charges party liability. My proposal would not affect at all the eases the majority cites that involve issues other than party liability.
4. Nevertheless, the evidence is sufficient to find appellant guilty as a principal.
Furthermore, even if we are to continue to make this obsolete distinction between principals and accomplices, I would hold that the evidence in this case is sufficient to support a finding of guilty “as a principal.” The Court of Appeals’ opinion states:
[W]e must determine if the evidence is sufficient to find appellant guilty by his own conduct without regard to any solicitation, encouragement, direction, aid, or attempted aid he may have given to his co-defendant, Hinojosa.
(Emphasis added.) I believe that this is an incorrect statement of the law.
A person commits “theft” if he “unlawfully appropriates property with intent to deprive the owner of property.” Texas Penal Code § 31.03(a). “Appropriate” means, among other things, “to acquire or otherwise exercise control over property other than real property.” Texas Penal Code § 31.02(5)(1993)[now (4) ]. Appropriation of property is “unlawful” if “the property is stolen and the actor appropriates the property knowing it was stolen by another.” Texas Penal Code § 31.03(b)(2). Hence, appellant would be guilty of theft as a principal if he exercised control over property — knowing that the property was stolen by another— with the intent to deprive the owner.
Although the Court of Appeals did not address sufficiency of the evidence to support appellant’s guilt as a party we may reasonably assume that, had it done so, it would have held the evidence sufficient. The evidence to establish party liability consists of testimony that appellant: planned a theft from an armored car with Hinojosa, followed an armored car for months to become familiar with the route, had been employed with an armored car company, had a key to an armored car, actually committed a theft from an armored ear but mistakenly stole a bag full of stamped food stamps, said he would use his sister’s car to commit the theft (it was the car used), expected to get something like hundreds of thousands of dollars from the theft, thought it worth the risk of dying to commit the theft, had no job, said he was not a type of person to live off a weekly pay-cheek, was in debt, had people “after him” because of the money he owed, was seen with a sack of money within two hours of the theft, bought his wife a ear and a thousand-dollar necklace with money he said he had stolen in armored car theft,2 and had, a week before the armored car theft, persuaded his girlfriend to give him the key to the store where she worked in order to (as he did) burglarize that location. There was also testimony that $35,000 had been stolen from the armored car, and that the locked door to the car did not appear to have been forced.
None of this testimony was considered by the Court of Appeals in its sufficiency analysis. It should have been, because whatever evidence supports the theory of “party liability” also supports, to some extent, a conclusion that appellant exercised control over property knowing it to be stolen and with the intent to deprive the owner of the property, i.e., was hable as a principal actor. The above evidence establishes sufficiently that appellant participated with Hinojosa in planning an armored car theft and that Hinojosa *307committed an armored car theft, per that plan, in which $35,000 was stolen. A reasonable jury could conclude that appellant’s possession of a sack of money within two hours of the theft established that he exercised control over property knowing it to be stolen and with the intent to deprive the owner. The only question of sufficiency, in my mind, is as to whether the jury could reasonably conclude that the amount over which appellant exercised control was $20,000 or more. Because “exercise control” is a broader term than “possess,” I would hold that the evidence is sufficient.
For the above reasons, I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and affirm the conviction.
McCORMICK, P.J. and WHITE, J., join.

. If, instead of seeking an acquittal, appellant had complained of juiy charge error, we would have required a showing of “egregious harm.” Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157 (Tex.Crim.App.1984). Although Almanza does not apply to sufficiency claims, it seems to me that the concerns prompting an "egregious harm” rule to unobject-ed to charge error apply equally to the issue confronted in the present case.

. It is unclear whether this money came from a previous armored car theft.