Court Opinion

ID: 9644998
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:10:00.67593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:21.219502
License: Public Domain

SPARLING, Justice,
dissenting.
The witness, Coale, would not be subject to prosecution for the crime of murder. Therefore, I dissent from the majority opinion.
The unquestioned facts as reflected by the record are that Coale knew of the appellant’s intention to kill the deceased, but that prior to the murder he specifically refused appellant’s request to help dispose of the body, and did nothing to aid or encourage the murder. Coale arrived at the scene shortly after the murder and observed the body. He helped ransack the decedent’s home, and he burned the deceased’s corpse. Enough gruesome facts exist to inspire revulsion toward the witness. Yet, the witness’ participation occurred after the deceased was dead. If an accessory after the fact1 is not answerable for the primary *51offense then I fail to see how the witness Coale could have been prosecuted for the murder of the victim. Again, if Coale could not have been prosecuted, he could not have been an accomplice witness. Russell v. State, 598 S.W.2d 238, 249 (Tex.Cr.App.1980) (en banc), cert denied, 449 U.S. 1003, 101 S.Ct. 544, 66 L.Ed.2d 300 (1980); Carrillo v. State, 591 S.W.2d 876, 882 (Tex.Cr.App.1979); Villarreal v. State, 576 S.W.2d 51, 56 (Tex.Cr.App.1978) (en banc); Ferguson v. State, 573 S.W.2d 516, 523 (Tex.Cr.App.1978) (en banc), cert denied, 442 U.S. 934, 99 S.Ct. 2870, 61 L.Ed.2d 304 (1979).
The majority, in one breath concedes that an accessory after the fact “can no longer be an accomplice witness.” Yet in another they hold that even though the undisputed evidence shows Coale to be only an accessory after the fact, it raised a jury issue as to whether Coale is an accomplice. Thus, the majority states that one can become an accomplice by the jury disbelieving the un-controverted evidence that he is only an accessory after the fact.
I would, instead, hold that there must be some evidence of Coale’s participation in the murder to raise a fact issue for the jury’s determination. See Singletary v. State, 509 S.W.2d 572, 575 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); Johnson v. State, 502 S.W.2d 761, 763 (Tex.Cr.App.1973), O’Dell v. State, 467 S.W.2d 444, 447 (Tex.Cr.App.1971), see generally 24 Tex.Jur.2d, Evidence § 691 (Supp.1982). I would therefore conclude that the court did not err in failing to submit a charge to the jury regarding Coale’s status as an accomplice.

. I am not unaware that the phrase “accessory after the fact” became obsolete with the advent of the 1974 Penal Code, but I use it to refer to participation by one in a crime subsequent to *51the commission of the offense. Singletary v. State, 509 S.W.2d 572 (Tex.Cr.App.1974).