Court Opinion

ID: 9777188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:01:41.620814+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:49.824569
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority opinion adds another chapter to a “fiction of law” conceived and composed in Compton v. State, 607 S.W.2d 246 (Tex.Cr.App.1980). Johnson v. State, 606 S.W.2d 894, 984 (Tex.Cr.App.1980) (Dissenting Opinion).
Just recently reprised in DingLer v. State, (Tex.Cr.App., No. 1086-83, delivered March 5, 1986) (Opinion on Rehearing), the theory is that “the employment relationship [between the person alleged as owner and the true owner] determine[s] who is the proper owner under [V.T.C.A. Penal Code,] Section 1.07(a)(24),” and thus will have “a greater right of possession” than an accused to certain property. Compton, supra, at 250-251.1
To make a way for that fiction Compton had to overrule McGee v. State, 572 S.W.2d 723 (Tex.Cr.App.1978), and in Johnson v. State, 606 S.W.2d 894, 896 (Tex.Cr.App.1980), overrule Commons v. State, 575 S.W.2d 518 (Tex.Cr.App.1979). That done, the Court wrote a bit of comedy in Smallwood v. State, 607 S.W.2d 911 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), regaling readers with how it is that a loading dock worker has “a greater right of possession” than a shoplifter to several pairs of pants boosted inside a store from a men’s furnishing department. Again, the Compton story is still a fairy tale: An accused intends to deprive another of prop*607erty that is not his in the first place, without consent that is not his to give in the second. Johnson, supra, at 896.
Today, the majority favors us with a mystery about who among employees of the same employer has that “greater right.” As the majority analyzes it, the situation is “that by the statutory definition of the word ‘owner,’ prior to the actual commission of the offense, both the appellant and Bourke each had possessory interests in the merchandise, i.e., at that moment in time each had the care, custody, and control of the merchandise that appellant was accused of stealing.” Opinion, p. 602. The truth is, of course, that in the sense contemplated by applicable statutory provisions neither the security guard nor the cashier had any right of possession to the two shirts and one gown actually owned and possessed by Sears.
One does not have an “interest” in property of another merely because he is an employee of the other. In determining whether one has “a right of possession,” to look woodenly at “possession” solely in light of its statutory definition, V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 1.07(a)(28) — actual care, custody, control or management — is to ignore the threshold principle that a personal “interest in property” is what may entitle one to possess it as a matter of right. “The Legislature recognized the concept that there are many types of possessory interest in property besides ownership in title.” Ex parte Davis, 542 S.W.2d 192, 196 (Tex.Cr.App.1976). It is some kind of “posses-sory interest” of a person which creates for that one “a right of possession.” Ordinarily an employee has no “possessory interest” in property of his employer that would provide him a right to possess it.
The difficulty in comprehending and applying concepts at work in theft cases is compounded by adherence to past judicial construction of pleading provisions in Article 21.08, V.A.C.C.P. Thus, worrying about “find[ing] any one individual in any given large corporation who can meet all the criteria of ‘possession’ ...,” Compton, supra at 251, the majority created the “greater right of possession” theory. But as shown in my Concurring Opinion in Dingier, supra, the problem previously perceived under former codes of criminal procedure “no longer exists under the present code when construed in harmony with related provisions of the new penal code,” so that we may now “eliminate the utter fiction of Compton ..., that an employee of a corporation has ‘a greater right to possession’ of corporate personal property than a stranger to the corporation.”
Because the majority continues to fictionalize an “owner” in theft cases, I respectfully dissent.
ONION, P.J., joins.

. Our concern is with appropriation of property other than real property; the Compton formulation does not implicate a transfer or purported transfer of title to or "other nonpossessory interest in property ...” V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 31.-01(5)(A). (All emphasis is mine throughout unless otherwise indicated.)