Court Opinion

ID: 9818516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 05:51:09.156129+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:52:35.913237
License: Public Domain

OPINION DENYING MOTION FOR REHEARING
PER CURIAM.
Appellant has filed a motion for rehearing urging this Court to focus our analysis on his chain of custody argument which was the third prong of his original sufficiency of the evidence issue. Specifically, he wants us to look at Jones v. State, 538 S.W.2d 118 (Tex.Crim.App.1976) as it applies to the particular evidence in this case. Officer Chamblee, the arresting officer, seized the drugs at the scene. Appellant now agrees that “Chamblee’s testimony is enough to establish” that “the evidence seized was placed in the secure Kerens Police Department lock box.” However, he urges this Court to find that the evidence Chief Slamcik took to the lab was never identified as the evidence Chamblee put in the lock box. This relates back to his original argument that the chain of custody was so deficient that it has “no legal weight at all.”
In Jones, the Court noted that the arresting officer never identified the drug exhibit as the one he seized at the time of the arrest. The Jones Court reversed the conviction and concluded, “[Tjhere was no showing that [the drug exhibit] was in any manner connected to appellant.” Id. at 114.
Jones1 cannot be, and never has been, read to require that the only method of proving a chain of custody is for the seizing officer to directly identify the drug exhibit in court as the one seized at the scene. Indeed, the author of Jones, later sitting by assignment as a justice on the Austin Court of Appeals, wrote an opinion affirming a conviction where none of the three officers at the scene identified the drug exhibit in court. Smith v. State, No. 03-99-00861-CR, 2001 Tex.App. LEXIS 150 (Tex.App.-Austin, Jan.11, 2001) (not designated for publication). The Smith *574court found “by careful reading of the record” there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to show a complete chain. Id. at *6.
Similarly, the record in the instant case is more than sufficient to show a complete chain. After reviewing the testimony of Chamblee, Slamcik, and the chemist — including Slamcik’s description of the procedure for handling drug evidence, the use of the log-in sheet, the details on the lab submission form and the chemist’s description of the drug exhibit — a rational jury could have found that the drugs seized by Chamblee were the same drugs analyzed by the chemist.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is denied.

. Jones is a case that has been distinguished frequently and never followed. The five published cases where Jones is cited in the majority opinion all distinguish it and reject the appellants’ chain of custody arguments. Sneed v. State, 875 S.W.2d 792, 794-95 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 1994, no pet.); Hallmark v. State, 789 S.W.2d 647, 650 (Tex.App.-Dallas 1990, pet. ref’d) ("proper chain of custody is not destroyed merely because the evidence is not identified at trial by the police officer initially recovering the evidence.”); Dominquez v. State, 759 S.W.2d 185, 186-87 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 1988, pet. ref'd); Simpson v. State, 709 S.W.2d 797, 804-805 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 1986, pet. ref'd); Jackson v. State, 640 S.W.2d 323, 325-26 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 1982, pet. ref’d). Similarly, Jones has been factually distinguished in numerous unpublished cases. See e.g. Page v. State, No. 03-03-00444-CR, 2004 WL 2007913, 2004 Tex.App. LEXIS 8260 (Tex.App.-Austin 2004) (not designated for publication).