Court Opinion

ID: 9675563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:57:50.697691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:35.537468
License: Public Domain

DAVIDSON, Judge,
dissenting.
The facts are not sufficient to support this conviction. I state only such of the facts as are necessary to show the proposition of law involved:
*200The owner of the stolen pipe tongs discovered that they were missing on September 13, 1955, from leased premises in Grayson County. He gave no testimony that would indicate how long the tongs had been missing at that time. There is an absence of any testimony as to when they were last seen in the possession of the owner or on the leased property. Approximately two months after it was discovered that the tongs were missing and after appellant had given the officers his consent to search the closet and premises, the tongs were found in his possession at his home in Wichita County, locked in a closet attached to an open garage or carport.
At the time the tongs were found in his possession, appellant gave an explanation of his possession thereof by telling the officers that he had a bill of sale for the tongs.
This explanation by the appellant that he had a bill of sale therefor was neither denied nor disputed by the state.
The defensive theory, as shown by the testimony of the appellant and others, was that he came into the possession of the tongs by a valid purchase, as evidence of which he offered the bill of sale.
The defense of alibi was also imposed.
In its final analysis, then, appellant’s guilt is made to depend upon his possession of the tongs some two months after they had been stolen — as to which the appellant, when his possession was first challenged, gave an explanation entirely in keeping with his innocence. Such explanation was not challenged by any testimony to the contrary.
Certain legal propositions enter into a determination of the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction:
One is that possession of stolen property is a circumstance of the guilt of the possessor thereof. To warrant an inference or presumption of guilt from the circumstance of possession, alone, of the stolen property, such possession must be recent, must be personal and exclusive, must be unexplained, and must involve a distinct and conscious assertion of property by the defendant. The authorities attesting the rule will be found under Note 37 of Art. 1410, Vernon’s P.C., and in Branch’s P.C., 2d Edition, Vol. 5, p. 96.
*201Another legal proposition is that when the state relies for a conviction upon proof of the possession of recently stolen property to make out a case of guilt and when the accused, at the time his possession was first challenged, made a reasonable explanation of his possession, the state must further show that such explanation was false. Note 38, Art. 1410, Vernon’s P.C.; Art. 1410, Branch’s P.C., 2d Edition, Vol. 5, p. 100.
Here, the state made no effort to show that appellant’s explanation of his possession was false. It is true that the trial court submitted to the jury the issue of a purchase by appellant of the property as a defense and this was rejected, but the fact remains, nevertheless, that appellant’s explanation that he had a bill of sale for the property cast upon the state the burden of offering some evidence to show the falsity of that explanation.
It must be remembered that recent possession of stolen property may be accounted for by proof of its purchase, whether the purchase be in good faith or bad faith. And if the defendant purchased the property, in fact, he cannot be convicted of the theft of it although he knew at the time he purchased it that it had been stolen by the seller. The receiver or concealer of stolen property cannot be guilty, also, of the theft of the property.
There is as much evidence, here, that appellant received the property from the thief, knowing it was stolen, as there is that he stole it.
Under such facts, the outstanding hypothesis that appellant was the receiver or concealer of the stolen property must be disproved in order to sustain a conviction for the theft thereof.
For the reason stated, the judgment should be reversed and the cause remanded.
I hereby enter my dissent.