Court Opinion

ID: 9644694
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:02:15.614313+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:53:06.051238
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Judge
(dissenting).
Appellant was convicted of rape by force and threats under our former Penal Code. After finding the appellant guilty, the jury assessed his punishment at ten years.
By his first two contentions, appellant urges that the trial court committed reversible error in failing to charge on the law of circumstantial evidence, despite the appellant’s timely written objection to the court’s charge. I believe the charge should have been given and that reversal is required.
The prosecutrix was alone in her trailer asleep during the early morning hours of April 20,1973, when she was awakened and forced at knifepoint to submit to several acts of sexual intercourse. The prosecutrix testified that her vision was extremely poor and that her attacker was wearing ladies’ hose over his face when he first accosted her. Shortly thereafter, the prosecutrix was blindfolded. As a result, the prosecu-trix was totally unable to identify the appellant as her assailant.
The prosecutrix did identify the appellant’s voice as being that of the man who raped her. However, the only other evidence connecting the appellant to the offense was purely circumstantial: Events from the appellant’s past were shown to be very similar to the autobiographical details *421which the assailant narrated to the prosecu-trix at the time of the offense.
The issue then is whether voice identification is direct or circumstantial evidence, for if it is not direct evidence, the trial' court erred in failing to charge on circumstantial evidence.
The distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence is that the former directly demonstrates the ultimate fact to be proved, while the latter is direct proof of a secondary fact which, by logical inference, demonstrates the ultimate fact to be proved. Crawford v. State, 502 S.W.2d 768 (Tex.Cr.App.1973), and cases there cited. The test is not whether the evidence is more or less probative, or even conclusive, but whether it applies directly or inferentially to the main fact to be proved. See 2 C. McCormick & R. Ray, Texas Law of Evidence, Sec. 1481 (2d Ed. 1956).
Thus, for over 35 years this Court has held that fingerprint identification is of great probative value, Grice v. State, 142 Tex.Cr.R. 4, 151 S.W.2d 211 (1941), yet it amounts to direct evidence only in a very narrow class of cases. Eiland v. State, 509 S.W.2d 596 (Tex.Cr.App.1974).
Voice identification, like evidence of fingerprint comparisons, fits readily within the classic definition of circumstantial evidence: First, one proves that the voices sound alike; then one logically infers from the seeming identity of voices that the person with the unknown voice is the same person whose voice is known and identified. Here it should be emphasized that the prosecu-trix was totally unfamiliar with the voice of her assailant (and the voice of the appellant) until the offense occurred; this is comparable to the situation which exists with regard to fingerprint comparisons, where the fingerprint which is “lifted” is an unknown factor until it is compared to the known fingerprint of an individual.
In Porter v. State, 50 S.W. 380 (Tex.Cr.App.1899), this Court indicated that a voice identification like the one in this case is circumstantial evidence. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reached a similar conclusion in United States v. Zweig, 467 F.2d 1217 (1972), cert. den. 409 U.S. 1111, [93 S.Ct. 921, 34 L.Ed.2d 692] (1973).
A charge on circumstantial evidence should have been given. The failure to do so was reversible error.