Court Opinion

ID: 9774716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:31:26.039323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:14.342779
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
Ever since the successor to an Old Code article was amended by Acts 1876, 15th Leg., ch. 139, p. 231, 8 Gammel’s Laws 1067, the common understanding of this kind of burglary has been that which the court found in Simms v. The State, 2 Tex.App. 110 (Ct.App.1877), towit: “In other words, to enter a house with intent to steal therefrom constitutes the crime of burglary under the law as it now is ...”1
Though the opinion of the Houston (1st) Court of Appeals has now “held to the contrary,” its reason is limited to the observation that V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 30.-02(a)(1) “does not specifically require an intent to commit theft from within the premises entered.” Robles v. State, 651 S.W.2d 868 (Tex.App.1983). But then neither did Chapter 139, Acts 1876, supra, nor any later proscription, see, e.g., Article 1389, P.C. 1925 — though implications throughout former Chapter Five are very *95strong that the intended theft was to take place within the premises. If those implications have been obliterated by the present penal code — and the majority seems to have accepted that they have — we ought to reason our way to this conclusion, and to that end I now turn.
Under the former penal codes a burglarious entry was by “force, threats or fraud” or, if into a “house”2 in daytime, by “breaking.”3 Articles 1389, 1390 and 1391, P.C. 1925. Entry by force was “the essential element of the offense,” Livingston v. State, 133 Tex.Cr.R. 437, 112 S.W.2d 190, 191 (1938), and when made with intent to commit theft, the notion was that “one burglarized a house,” Thurston v. State, 132 Tex.Cr.R. 287, 103 S.W.2d 770, 772 (1937); Galemore v. State, 124 Tex.Cr.R. 77, 61 S.W.2d 519, 520 4 (1933). Moreover, the act of breaking and entering at nighttime raised a presumption that the act was done with intent to steal. Byrd v. State, 435 S.W.2d 508, 510 (Tex.Cr.App.1968).
It may be conceded that current delineation of the offense of burglary retains a good many characteristics of that crime under the former penal codes. See generally Practice Commentary following § 30.02. However, the focus has shifted from “breaking” into the house to merely entering it. Section 30.02(a)(1). Actual force in making an entry is no longer required. See Day v. State, 532 S.W.2d 302, 305 (Tex.Cr.App.1975). The essential overt act of burglary is an intrusion of the human body (or any part of the body or any physical object connected with the body). Section 30.02(b). Protection against intrusion is “the rationale underlying Section 30.02,” Practice Commentary, supra.
Since a burglarious entry made with intent to commit theft (or a felony) is the complete offense, whether any theft (or felony) is actually perpetrated thereafter, Garcia v. State, 571 S.W.2d 896, 899 (Tex.Cr.App.1978), just where the intruder expects to accomplish the theft (or felony) intended would seem to be of little significance.5 The essential vice in such an entry is its intrusive nature — offending as it does personal privacy rights and interests in security of property — rather than the subjective intent of an intruder that may never be manifested.
Therefore, I would hold as a matter of law that when coupled with an entry the intent to commit theft need not be to steal property within the premises entered, but may be directed to any property the intruder intends to steal at the time entry is made.
For these reasons I would affirm the judgment of the court of appeals and, therefore, I join the judgment of this Court.

. All emphasis is added by the writer of this opinion unless otherwise indicted.

. Within the chapter treating burglary, a “house” was “any building or structure erected for public or private use ... of whatever material it may be constructed.” Article 1395, P.C. 1925. The statutory definition was uniformly held to have “the broadest signification and meaning,” being “very comprehensive,” Williams v. State, 72 Tex.Cr.R. 371, 162 S.W. 838, 839 (1914).

. “Breaking” meant that “entry must be made with actual force,” Article 1394, P.C. 1925.

. “In dealing with burglary such as charged in the present instance, the offense is not complete unless there is an ‘entry’ of some kind into the building charged to have been burglarized ...”
Thus, entering an attic of a building through a hole cut in its roof was burglary even though no entry be made down through a ceiling to the main floor where goods to be stolen are stored. Mobley v. State, 130 Tex.Cr.R. 159, 92 S.W.2d 1038 (1936). However, it was not necessary that the evidence show there were such articles on the premises, Duran v. State, 160 Tex.Cr.R. 167, 268 S.W.2d 167, 169 (1954), or in the case of a private residence that an occupant be present when it is burglarized, Kizer v. State, 400 S.W.2d 333, 335 (Tex.Cr.App.1966).

.To be sure, § 30.02(a)(3) contemplates that one who enters a structure and commits or attempts to commit a felony or theft does it within the structure. And it is reasonable to say that implicit in § 30.02(a)(2) is the notion that the intent in remaining concealed after entry is to commit a felony or theft within the structure, though one may argue otherwise with some merit. But nothing in § 30.02(a)(1), except perhaps in its historical application under the former statutes, implies that the felony or theft intended by an intruder is to be committed within the structure.