McClinton v. State

38 S.W.3d 747, 2001 Tex. App. LEXIS 460, 2001 WL 58599
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 25, 2001
Docket14-98-01086-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by36 cases

This text of 38 S.W.3d 747 (McClinton v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McClinton v. State, 38 S.W.3d 747, 2001 Tex. App. LEXIS 460, 2001 WL 58599 (Tex. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

OPINION

NORMAN LEE, Justice

(Assigned).

A jury convicted appellant of possession of a controlled substance (cocaine), more than four but less than 200 grams in weight. See Tex.Health & Safety Code Ann. § 481.113 (Vernon Supp.2000). The trial court sentenced appellant to twelve years’ confinement, but later altered the sentence to ten years’ confinement. In three points of error appellant contests the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction and asserts the trial court erred by not granting a continuance on medical grounds. We affirm.

We first tackle appellant’s complaints regarding the legal and factual sufficiency of the evidence. Legal sufficiency is the constitutional minimum required by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to sustain a criminal conviction. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 315-16, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). The standard for reviewing a legal sufficiency challenge is whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. at 320, 99 S.Ct. at 2789; Johnson *749 v. State, 871 S.W.2d 188, 186 (Tex.Crim.App.1993), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1046, 114 S.Ct. 1579, 128 L.Ed.2d 222 (1994). The evidence is examined in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict. Jackson, 443 U.S. at 320, 99 S.Ct. at 2789; Johnson, 871 S.W.2d at 186.

This court also has jurisdiction to review the factual sufficiency of the evidence. Johnson v. State, 23 S.W.3d 1 (Tex.Crim.App.2000). Our review begins with the presumption that the evidence is legally sufficient. Jones v. State, 944 S.W.2d 642, 647 (Tex.Crim.App.1996). We must look to all the evidence “without the prism of ‘in the light most favorable to the verdict.’ ” Clewis v. State, 922 S.W.2d 126, 129 (Tex.Crim.App.1996). In our review, we must be careful not to intrude on the jury’s role as the sole judge of the credibility of the witnesses or the weight to be given their testimony. See Santellan v. State, 939 S.W.2d 155, 164 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). We may set aside the verdict on factual sufficiency grounds only when that verdict is so against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence as to be clearly wrong and unjust. See Clewis, 922 S.W.2d at 134-135.

Appellant was arrested at a residence during a 1997 raid. He contests the sufficiency of the evidence linking him to the cocaine seized during the raid. The State is required to establish not only care, custody or control of the contraband on the part of the accused, but that the accused was aware of his connection with it and knew what it was. See Brotan v. State, 911 S.W.2d 744, 747 (Tex.Crim.App.1995). The state must “establish, to the requisite level of confidence, that the accused’s connection with the drug was more than just fortuitous.” Id. We will therefore detail the evidence which tends to link appellant to the contraband.

Houston Police Officer W.A. Wap-pers testified that he was the first officer out of the police vehicle during the raid. As point man, his job was to cover the back of the property being raided, both so that the escape route would be cut off for those in the residence and to prevent threats from coming from an unexpected direction. At the back of the property was a shed; next to that shed and near the door stood appellant. Wappers announced that a raid was in progress; at that point, he said appellant made eye contact with him, then turned toward the shed, stuck his arm inside the door, withdrew his arm, then lay down on the ground. After securing the back area of the property, Wap-pers put appellant under arrest.

Houston Police Sgt. W.C. Pudifin was also on the raid. He said he saw appellant standing “foot and a half, two feet” away from the door of the shed, saw appellant stick his hand inside and took it out, then put his hands up and laid down in front of the shed. Pudifin looked inside the shed and spotted a baggie containing a white substance behind a torn sheet of tarpaper. Pudifin did not retrieve the baggie, but when it became obvious what he had seen, appellant smiled at him and said, “It’s not mine” and that “You have to prove it in court, okay?” Pudifin also said there was another man about twelve feet away from the shed, but that no one else went in the shed during the raid.

Officers Robert Romano and Mark Smith, members of the police raid team, said they did not see appellant stick his arm inside the shed. Both said they were concerned with the people near the front of the property at the time.

Vernon McWoodson was in his yard several doors down from the property in question. He said he saw appellant arrive at the residence just a minute before the raid occurred. He later saw appellant lying handcuffed not near the shed, but more than twenty feet away, near the house.

Appellant testified that he stopped by the residence to get someone to help him unload a lawn mower. He was told by several men under a carport attached to *750 the residence that the owner was in the shed, and had just taken “one or two steps” in that direction when the raid started. Appellant threw his hands up and lay down on the ground when ordered to “freeze” by the officers. He said he never got any closer than 25 feet to the shed, and that the cocaine was not his.

We find this evidence legally sufficient to support appellant’s conviction. The jury is the trier of fact, and is the ultimate authority on the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be given to their testimony. See Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 38.04 (Vernon 1979); Penagraph v. State, 623 S.W.2d 341, 343 (Tex.Crim.App. [Panel Op.] 1981). For this reason, any inconsistencies in the testimony should be resolved in favor of the jury’s verdict in a legal sufficiency review. Johnson v. State, 815 S.W.2d 707, 712 (Tex.Crim.App.1991) (quoting Moreno v. State, 755 S.W.2d 866, 867 (Tex.Crim.App.1988)).

A rational jury was entitled to conclude that appellant knowingly possessed cocaine. Both Wappers and Pudifin said they saw appellant stick something inside the shed after the raid started; a cursory search there turned up the cocaine in question.

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Bluebook (online)
38 S.W.3d 747, 2001 Tex. App. LEXIS 460, 2001 WL 58599, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mcclinton-v-state-texapp-2001.