Court Opinion

ID: 9771352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:39:39.601667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:28.776330
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
What the majority still refuses to recognize is that the statutory definition of “owner” ultimately settled on by the Legislature in V.T.C.A.Penal Code, § 1.07(a)(24), is not “a single, universally applicable definition,” as characterized in Opinion, at 393. Rather, that definition embraces three distinctly different aspects of “interest in property” the law is “designed to protect,” Ex parte Davis, 542 S.W.2d 192, at 196 (Tex.Cr.App.1976), viz:
one, title to property,
two, possession of property, or
three, a greater right to possession of property.*
Disjunctively stated, the definition “goes to the scope of interests protected by the law,” and reflects legislative recognition and understanding of “the concept that there are many types of possessory interests in property besides ownership in title.” Ex parte Davis, supra, at 196. It is an “interest in property” that may entitle one to possess it as a matter of right; without some kind of “possessory interest” a person has no “right of possession.”
For reasons given in my dissenting opinion in Compton v. State, 607 S.W.2d 246, at 254-257 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), the majority again errs in saying that one may have a “greater right of possession” than another when neither is shown to have a possessory interest cognizable at law in the property in question. See also Freeman v. State, 707 S.W.2d 597 (Tex.Cr.App.1986) (Clinton, J., dissenting at 607).
ONION, P.J., joins.

 All emphasis is mine throughout unless otherwise noted.