Court Opinion

ID: 9665262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:43:32.342968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:14.306358
License: Public Domain

ON appellant’s motion for rehearing.
WOODLEY, Judge.
Appellant again urges the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the conviction, and insists that we were in error in holding that there is sufficient corroboration of appellant’s confession.
The bare fact that appellant was in possession of the stolen property is not sufficient to show that he knew it was stolen. *182But such possession was a circumstance which together with other circumstances may be sufficient for the jury to draw such an inference. The confession supplies direct evidence of such guilty knowledge. Other circumstances are found here such as the concealment of the stolen merchandise which appellant confessed to having received from his step-father-in-law, knowing it to be stolen property.
On Monday following the recovery of a part of the stolen groceries, appellant was asked about the remaining part not found at his “Trading Post.” He declined to tell or show the officers where these goods were located, but said that he would bring in all he had not disposed of and all that he could get back. He declined to permit the officers to go with him to where these goods were located. He also told the officers that he wanted to pay for all that he could not return.
Ralph Hollins, an employee of appellant, referring to a time subsequent to the above conversation, testified that he went to appellant’s house in Ennis where he found a car with a loaded trailer. Under the directions of appellant, he drove this car to the jail at Waxahachie where the goods were unloaded.
Hollins testified:
“Mr. Pollan told me to take that trailer load over there; he didn’t want it there. I left and taken it away and I don’t know what was on it. It was a truck and trailer. Mr. Pollan told me to get it away from over there, and I did. I took it to the jail house and delivered it to Mr. White. Then I took the trailer back and parked it there in town. I left it in town and when I come back it was gone. * * * When I got the truck, it was sitting out on the highway, on the road.”
The merchandise from this trailer was identified as part of the stolen groceries.
According to the testimony offered by appellant, the groceries recovered at appellant’s “Trading Post” were delivered by the thief and were placed on the shelves there in the store. Appellant arrived about the time the stacking of the groceries was completed.
It is significant to us that a part of these stolen groceries were not in the store at the time of the search, but were in some undisclosed place known to appellant. If they had been *183stacked in the store, they had been removed and placed elsewhere. They were loaded in a trailer and brought to the residence of appellant, from where and by whom, is not disclosed. It seems clear that appellant was concealing this part of the stolen goods, even after a part thereof had been recovered from his store.
We remain convinced that the evidence is sufficient to sustain the conviction.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.
Opinion approved by the court.