Court Opinion

ID: 9677564
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:55:26.67344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:56.848945
License: Public Domain

DOUGLAS, Judge
(dissenting).
The majority reverses this conviction on the ground that the State did not prove that Cohen transported fireworks in the 12,300 block of Westheimer Road in the City of Houston.
It appears that the State proved the allegation as alleged in the complaint. M. M. Henry, District Chief of the Houston Fire Department, testified that Cohen appeared at the fireworks stand at the 11,000 block of Westheimer and stated that he was the owner. He then loaded the truck and proceeded out Westheimer. The officers stopped the truck at Alief and Westheimer. Cohen then drove out on Westheimer through the 12,000 block and through the city limits and was stopped again.
H. G. Wooten testified that the 11,000 block was not, but the 12,100 and 12,500 blocks of Westheimer were, in the City of Houston, and that he told Cohen that he would be arrested if he drove the truck inside the city limits. Cohen drove the truck west on Westheimer. Wooten attempted to stop him in the city limits but he would not stop until he drove to the Dairy-Ash-ford Road outside the city. Cohen proceeded west and passed through a strip from five-tenths of a mile to over a mile within the City of Houston.
The evidence shows that that part of Westheimer between 12,100 and 12,500 blocks is within the city limits of Houston. Cohen drove west on Westheimer and the block numbers were increasing. He started on the 11,000 block and was stopped the first time in the middle of the 12,000 block. After Wooten turned on his red lights Cohen drove approximately a mile and stopped when he got outside the city. Cohen testified that he went through a strip of the city limits and had to in order to leave the stand.
The evidence, in my opinion, if not direct, is sufficient to show by the circumstances, leaving no other reasonable hypothesis, that Cohen transported fireworks in the 12,300 block of Westheimer in the City of Houston.
The conviction should be affirmed.
MORRISON, J., joins in this dissent.