Court Opinion

ID: 9773724
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:56:37.537959+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:56.799016
License: Public Domain

*748CHARLES L. REYNOLDS, Senior Justice,
concurring.
Concurring with the rationale expressed in the majority opinion for sustaining appellant Dennis Hood’s second point of error, which requires a reversal and remand, I would also sustain, as another reason for the reversal and remand, appellant’s first point of error. By that point, he contends the trial court erred in refusing to admit into evidence copies of the log sheets he made in his employment as a truck driver.
Appellant was charged with the offense of aggravated sexual assault, alleged to have occurred in Amarillo, Potter County, on or about the 12th day of July, 1994. Although the complainant testified that she did not remember, and had not told anyone, the date in July the alleged offense occurred, she fixed the date as the 16th day of July, 1994 in a statement she made in another hearing. When appellant, employed as a truck driver who was was required to fill out log sheets each day, offered copies of the log sheets he had made at the time the complainant said the offense occurred to evince he was not then in Amarillo, the State objected because they were not the originals. The court sustained the objection, thereby excluding the evidence.
On appeal, the State’s justification for the exclusion is the best evidence rule, i.e., the original must be produced or its absence explained, as articulated in Ortiz v. State, 651 S.W.2d 764, 766 (Tex.Cr.App.1983). However, the Ortiz opinion was issued three years before the adoption of Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence 1003, which, as the majority opinion documents, was enacted as an exception to the best evidence rule. Thus, the State’s objection was not a valid one, and since the State did not question the authenticity of the copies, the court erred in sustaining the objection.
The copies of the log sheets, bearing on the question whether appellant was present at the scene of the alleged offense, were an essential component of his plea of not guilty. In my view of the record, the exclusion of the evidence not only might possibly have prejudiced the jurors’ decision-making process, but was of such magnitude that it disrupted the jurors’ orderly evaluation of the evidence. Harris v. State, 790 S.W.2d 568, 587-88 (Tex.Cr.App.1989). Resultantly, I cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that the exclusion of the evidence made no contribution to appellant’s conviction. Tex. R. App. P. 81(b)(2).
Accordingly, I would also sustain appellant’s second point of error as a reason to reverse the judgment and remand the cause to the trial court.
REAVIS, J., concurring.