Court Opinion

ID: 9764293
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:18:22.630201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:55.619208
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
The indictment for attempted burglary of a habitation alleged as the “act amounting to more than mere preparation,” V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 15.01(a), that appellant did “reach his hand through a screen door of the habitation ...” Appellant contended and the court of appeals agreed that “the evidence at trial fails to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Flournoy reached his hand through the screen door of the victim’s mobile home.” Flournoy v. State, 650 S.W.2d 526 (Tex.App.—Fort Worth 1983). Now the majority would find otherwise.
The State presented the complaining witness to relate what she saw appellant and his companion do and what she did on the occasion in question, and the majority opinion sets out as much of her testimony as it deems pertinent—in none of which, however, does the complainant say that she actually saw appellant “reach his hand through a screen door.” 1 Thus, resolution of the sufficiency issue depends for the most part on how one interprets her “con-clusory statements that this is what must have happened, instead of statements that she saw this happen,” Flournoy v. State, supra, at 525.
In my view, three judges of the court of appeals are fully competent to, and did, review the record to find that “there was a failure of proof on this allegation by the State,” Flournoy v. State, supra. See Wilson v. State, 654 S.W.2d 465, 469-470 (Tex.Cr.App.1983) (Clinton, J., dissenting). Verity of the policy position taken in Wilson, supra, is fortified in the instant cause by the fact that in reversing the court below the majority does not even pretend the opinion of the court of appeals implicates a reason for review. Ultimately all it does is conclude, contrary to the judgment of the court of appeals, that the evidence is sufficient. That is not a valid reason under our own rules. See Tex.Cr.App. Rule 302.
Adhering the view that “review” such as this misapprehends the new role assigned to this Court by constitutional amendment and legislative enactment, I respectfully dissent.

. The majority relates:
"Conley further testified that ... she then saw appellant return to the front of the mobile home, where he ‘proceeded trying to unlock the door ... his hands were moving like he was trying to—like a screwdriver or something, like he was trying to get into something.' Conley also testified: ‘The screen door was closed, and he was trying to—going through the screen door, trying to get to the main door.... I was watching, as he kept moving his hands, like he was trying to open the [front] door.”