Court Opinion

ID: 9775064
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:42:31.546912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:19.710053
License: Public Domain

ON appellant’s motion for rehearing.
WOODLEY, Judge.
*620These further facts found in the record appear to be material.
The witnesses who were in the basement of the middle of the three buildings which constitute the North Waco Baptist Church were Mrs. Harlin W. Mitchell and her 14 year old son Wayne. Their suspicions were aroused because, as Mrs. Mitchell testified, “I saw you reaching and getting or putting something under there that you had no business doing around a church.”
After appellant left the first hole or air vent Mrs. Mitchell sent her son to see what appellant was doing on the other side of the building. Wayne testified that when he went to the back door of the building appellant “was in the alley there bent down looking in the vent hole on the other side. He started up the alley and I started back around, then I saw him stop and he went back there again to that vent hole, and then he came on around and crossed the alley and he went into his back yard there across the alley.”
Wayne then rejoined his mother and they together inspected the ventilator hole where they had first seen appellant.
Hearing footsteps approaching from the direction of the alley, Mrs. Mitchell and Wayne started walking toward the rear of the building and met appellant. As they passed some words of greeting were exchanged.
The Mitchells then re-entered the building through the back door. Mrs. Mitchell testified at this point, “There is a window where I could see out and he came back real quick to the back of the building there where he came from. - - - and I saw him at that lumber pile---on the concrete part there, and he was reaching down under that lumber pile at the south end of it. - - - He didn’t take any time there, either getting something or putting something away, and he came back between those two buildings there and around the front.---he came around and I heard a car start.”
The Mitchells went to the lumber pile and found the two cans of marihuana. As to where the cans were found, Wayne Mitchell testified: “He was standing on the concrete portion there and the lumber pile was right next to it. He was standing bent over, and we looked there.” Asked what they found there, he replied “Those two cans.”
*621The cans found were later turned over to the police officers and were identified as containing marihuana.
Appellant did not testify but offered testimony tending to show that the alley at the church property was “back of where we live”; that they had a double garage on it, but that the alley was not used exclusively by appellant’s family.
We remain convinced that the evidence is sufficient to sustain the jury’s finding that appellant had possession of the marihuana found at the lumber pile.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.