Court Opinion

ID: 9662333
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:06:07.762131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:38.687598
License: Public Domain

MORRISON, Presiding Judge,
(dissenting).
This prosecution rests almost entirely upon the testimony *259of the child. I cannot agree to an affirmance of this conviction, because the little girl’s account of the transactions does not, as I see it, comport with human experience. Recently, in Botello v. State, 161 Texas Cr. R. 207, 275 S.W. 2d 814, we said, “This type of case gives this Court some of its greatest concern and receives the most careful scrutiny.”
The little girl’s father came to the storeroom and spoke to the appellant through the window and yet she made no outcry. In fact, she made no outcry at all. The mother secured her information from the child by means of questioning later that day. The appellant had never been in a position of locus parent! to the child, and therefore had no domination over her. The girl testified to an act of intercourse with her in the storeroom and then said, “and he did it up there too,” when she and the appellant were left alone together in an automobile across the street from the courthouse in the city of Odessa in the middle of a week-day afternoon. The doctor did not examine the child until five days after the incident is alleged to have occurred, and, of course, he was in no position to testify as to the cause of the mild injury which he found on the child’s privates. The child’s parents must have entertained some doubt as to the appellant’s guilt, because no report was made to law enforcement agencies until five or six days after the child reported the attack to them.
The appellant, 40 years of age, had never before been in trouble and abundantly established his good reputation.
I respectfully enter my dissent.