Court Opinion

ID: 9773201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:40:00.346133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:50.989290
License: Public Domain

O’CONNOR, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The majority’s opinion affirms a conviction against Elija T. Smith, the appellant, for possession of cocaine based only on the results of a field test and an invalid laboratory test. No other evidence supports the jury’s finding that the appellant possessed cocaine.
As stated in the majority’s opinion, a car driven by Gilbert Rodriguez was stopped by Officer N.E. Malloy for a traffic violation. *723After Rodriguez got out of the car, Malloy saw a “chrome-looking tube, the kind they use for smoking crack cocaine,” on the floorboard of the driver’s side (pipe one). Malloy then searched the car. He found two more pipes, one of metal (pipe two) and one of glass (pipe three), on the passenger’s side of the car, where the appellant had been sitting.
Malloy conducted a field test on the two pipes he found near the appellant (pipes two and three), and both tested positive for cocaine. Malloy testified he saw a substance in the glass pipe. Sometime before trial, a chemist washed all three pipes with sulfuric acid, combined the wash, and conducted a spectrograph analysis on the substance. The result of the test of the combined substance from the three pipes revealed 7.06 milligrams of pure cocaine.
The appellant contends we can give no weight to Malloy’s testimony to prove that the substance possessed by the appellant was cocaine. I agree. Malloy’s testimony regarding the result of his field test of the three pipes is not evidence the appellant possessed cocaine. Curtis v. State, 548 S.W.2d 57, 59 (Tex.Crim.App.1977) (an experienced narcotics officer, who conducted a field test, may not testify a powder is heroin). Even the State agrees that Malloy’s testimony has no probative value as expert testimony. The State, however, argues we can consider Malloy’s testimony as a nonexpert witness because he was testifying about his actual observations of the test results.
The majority states it gives no probative value to Malloy’s conclusion that the cotton turned blue in his field test because of cocaine, but it assigns value to the rest of his testimony. Then, the majority bootstraps Malloy’s testimony by permitting the expert to testify that the results of the field test conducted by Malloy was probably an indication of cocaine.
The majority relies on Hicks v. State, 545 S.W.2d 805, 809-10 (Tex.Crim.App.1977) for the statement “If this testimony (the field officer’s) was error, it was rendered harmless when a qualified and expert chemist later testified that the substance was cocaine.” Hicks did not involve the mixing of the results of three containers, as this case does. In Hicks, an expert testified unequivocally that the substance found on the defendant was cocaine. Here, that is the very issue challenged by the appellant in this appeal.1
The majority holds Malloy’s testimony supports an inference that cocaine was present in one of the pipes found close to the appellant. I disagree. Malloy’s testimony supports no inference because the evidence that cocaine was present in pipes two and three is not based on proper expert testimony.
The majority’s analysis has at least three problems: (1) The combination of the wash from the three pipes invalidated the test; (2) the field test was not sufficient evidence that the appellant possessed cocaine; and (3) the expert was equivocal about the accuracy of the field test.
The combination invalidated the test
Before conducting the test in the laboratory, the expert combined the results from three pipes, one of which the appellant was not charged with possessing. There is no testimony that indicates how much of the cocaine was from pipe one, located near the driver, and how much was from pipes two and three, the ones located on the passenger’s side of the vehicle. For all we know, all of the substance could have come from pipe one, which was found on the driver’s side; alternatively, most could have come from pipe one, and only a legally insufficient amount could have come from pipes two and three. See Coleman v. State, 545 S.W.2d 831, 835 (Tex.Crim.App.1977) (5.06 milligrams was not sufficient to support a conviction). Under either scenario, the appellant’s conviction cannot be affirmed on the expert’s *724testimony after the State combined the substances from pipes one, two, and three.
The field test was insufficient
The majority seems to say that whenever an officer conducts a field test that results in the positive identification of drugs, all the State is required to do is bring an expert to testify that field tests are generally accurate. I disagree. Nothing in our jurisprudence permits us to conclude the State can skip the laboratory test and rely on a field test. A field test is not sufficient evidence of the presence of a controlled substance on which to base a conviction, Curtis, 548 S.W.2d at 59; and a field test cannot be elevated to “scientific” evidence by the testimony of an expert.
When an expert conducts a test in the laboratory, the expert conducts it under circumstances that reduce the possibility of error. A jury can rely on expert testimony because it has the assurance that the results are conducted under scientific controls. Nothing in our jurisprudence permits us to elevate the testimony of a non-expert witness to the level of “scientific testimony.”
The expert was equivocal
The expert testified that the field test is only presumptive, that it can result in a false-positive. He explained that a false-positive result of the field test occurs when a substance that is not an illegal drug produces the color blue. He gave examples of drugs that cause a false positive: laundry detergent, baking soda, and legal drugs. He said he had never seen a false reading (he did not say a “false-positive”) from a metal pipe, but he had seen some from glass pipes.
On this record, the combined testimony of the officer and the expert about the field test is not enough for a jury to conclude that the appellant possessed cocaine. Only an expert can testify whether a substance is cocaine.
I would sustain the appellant’s point of error, and reverse.

. Even if Hicks applied, the majority's statement does not withstand scrutiny. The Court of Criminal Appeals held in Cole v. State, 839 S.W.2d 798, 808 (Tex.Crim.App.1990), that a chemist cannot testify at trial about the test results conducted on a substance from another chemist’s report. The Court noted that some of the analy-ses were "remarkably subjective in nature as well as remarkably imprecise and subject to individual interpretation.” A field test conducted by an officer on the scene is even "more subjective” and less precise than any test conducted by a chemist in a laboratory.