Court Opinion

ID: 9638538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:46:24.977859+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:07.608185
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
dissenting.
Because I am still convinced that the evidence presented by the State was insufficient as a matter of law to sustain the verdict of the jury finding the appellant guilty of rape, I must therefore respectfully dissent to the majority’s holding that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the verdict of the jury.
Appellant was charged with violating. V.T.C.A., Penal Code, Sec. 21.02(b)(3), which provides that the offense of rape occurs if the female has not consented and the defendant knows that she is unconscious or physically unable to resist. By virtue of the express wording of the statute, in order to legally convict a person of violating the stated provisions of the rape statute, the State must prove both of these elements of the offense. When I authored the majority panel opinion, and reached the result that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the verdict of the jury, I considered the fact that the appellant had given a confession. However, I did not find it added anything to what I discerned the facts of the case to be. And I still don’t. The majority has now concluded that the evidence is sufficient to establish that both of the above elements were proved by the State. Nowhere, however, does the majority opinion explain or inform us how such a conclusion was reached.
Even viewing the facts in a light most favorable to the verdict of the jury, as this Court is required to do, I am still unable to conclude from all of the facts the State presented that the evidence is sufficient to show that the appellant knew at the time of the sexual intercourse that the female was physically unable to resist.
Be that as it may, I am unable to understand how anyone can reasonably conclude that the appellant’s confession, standing alone, is sufficient to establish that the female did not consent to sexual intercourse with the appellant. Again, not only must the State prove that the female was physically unable to resist, but additionally must prove that when the act of sexual intercourse occurred, she did not consent to the act of sexual intercourse. This is the way the Legislature wrote the statute and it is our duty to give the statute a reasonable interpretation.
The majority implicitly holds that the confession, standing alone, furnishes necessary evidence to prove both of the required statutory elements. I totally disagree with this conclusion. The confession nowhere specifically and expressly states that the female never consented to the act of sexual intercourse with the appellant, nor does the confession ever state that she refused to *619have sexual intercourse with the appellant. I do not believe that the mere failure of the appellant to affirmatively state in the confession that the female did consent is sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did not consent, since there is no indication in the confession that the appellant at the time he made the statement was in fact queried as to whether she did in fact consent. It was the State’s burden and not the appellant’s burden to prove that the female did not consent to having sexual intercourse with appellant prior to their having sexual intercourse. In fact, one of the State’s very own witnesses testified that the female did consent to the act of sexual intercourse shortly after she entered the appellant’s automobile. This fact was never contradicted by the State, either by the appellant’s confession or by any medical testimony that she would not have been able to consent — if in fact she had previously lapsed into unconsciousness due to her diabetic condition. And that was my point when ! may have overly chastised the prosecuting attorney in stating that a more probing examination of the pathologist should have occurred.
Furthermore, this is a conviction based upon circumstantial evidence. There is absolutely nothing in the record of appeal to rebut the reasonable hypothesis that the female voluntarily entered appellant’s vehicle, although appearing intoxicated to appellant, but thereafter consented to having sexual intercourse with the appellant, especially in light of other unrebutted testimony that the female had engaged in sexual intercourse with the appellant on at least one other occasion.
The conduct of the appellant and others in this cause, in leaving the female in a city park, while nude and torpid, continues to fill me with revulsion, and such conduct will always be repugnant to my sensibilities. But that is not the issue before this Court. Our man-made, legislatively enacted law, does not proscribe a male having sexual intercourse with a female who has become unconscious — if that female has consented to having sexual intercourse before becoming unconscious.
In light of the State’s demonstrated failure to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the lack of consent by the female, I must respectfully dissent to the majority’s unexplained conclusion that the evidence is sufficient to prove such a lack of consent.