Court Opinion

ID: 9612162
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:05:43.574079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:19.918322
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring in result) .
I concur in the result for the reason that although I believe the testimony placing defendant’s car at another place half hour prior to his arrest may have been material and not prejudicial, other testimony to the effect that at that time someone who had broken a grocery store window was seen to approach this same car, was immaterial and in my opinion prejudicial. Some veniremen well may have had a reasonable doubt as to defendant’s guilt, but for the circumstance that defendant’s car was seen and apparently used in connection with an offense similar to that with which the defendant here was charged, giving rise to a not unreasonable belief that defendant was a party to such previous offense and hence likely to be guilty in the instant case.
I agree with the commentary of Mr. Justice Crockett, in .his dissent which follows, to the effect that the total story of a crime is like a multi-colored stone mosaic, but we cannot, for the purpose of completing a judicial mosaic in criminal cases, simply supply stones which, though filling a void, come from foreign quarries, — if such stones in completing the pattern, may be those that seal a mausoleum in which an innocent might be interred. In my opinion, the evidence that someone, — admittedly not the accused, — was seen to run toward accused’s car after such stranger had broken a window at some other site, may fit the mosaic of which Mr. Justice Crockett speaks, but it also may be the loadstone with which the jury sealed defendant’s sepulchre.