Pennock v. State

725 S.W.2d 414, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 6305
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 29, 1987
DocketNo. 01-85-00553-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 725 S.W.2d 414 (Pennock 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
Pennock v. State, 725 S.W.2d 414, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 6305 (Tex. Ct. App. 1987).

Opinion

OPINION

LEVY, Justice.

A jury convicted appellant of burglary of a habitation with the intent to commit theft and assessed punishment at 40 years confinement.

In his sole ground of error, appellant contends that the jury charge is fundamentally defective because it instructs the jury that the law presumes that a person who enters a habitation at night has the intent to commit theft. Appellant did not object to the charge at trial.

The charge reads in pertinent part as follows:

Where evidence of the act of breaking and entering a habitation shows to have occurred at nighttime, i.e. any time from thirty minutes after sunset to thirty minutes before sunrise, it shall be ■presumed, that the person doing the breaking and entering did so with the intent to commit the crime of theft; however this presumption may be overcome by other evidence showing that the act of breaking and entering was not done with the intent to commit the crime of theft.
The jury is instructed relative to this presumption, as follows:
(A) that the facts giving rise to the presumption must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt;
(B) that if such facts are proven beyond a reasonable doubt the jury may find that the element of the offense sought to be presumed exists, but it is not bound to so find;
(C) that even though the jury may find the existence of such element, the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt each of the other elements of the offense charged; and
(D) if the jury has a reasonable doubt as to the existence of a fact or facts giving rise to the presumption, the presumption fails and the jury shall not consider the presumption for any purpose.
“Theft” is the unlawful appropriation of property with intent to deprive the owner of [such] property and without the effective consent of the owner.
[416]*416[[Image here]]
A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result. (Emphasis added).

Ordinarily, the inference of an intent to steal may be said to flow logically from the proved facts of breaking and entering a habitation at nighttime, because it reasonably comports with common human experience, i.e., there is a rational connection between the facts proved and the ultimate fact inferred. The jury is left free to reject the inference if a reasonable doubt remains as to the defendant’s guilt in light of all the circumstances of the case. Our legislature, however, has not seen fit to incorporate this inference in our Penal Code.

The Court of Criminal Appeals in Aguilar v. State, 682 S.W.2d 556, 558 (Tex.Crim.App.1985), stated, “[t]he ‘presumption’ of the intent to commit theft arising from non-consensual nighttime entry is an appellate vehicle employed to review the sufficiency of the evidence, not a trial vehicle used to prove an element of the State’s case” (footnote omitted). Except in consideration of a motion for instructed verdict or new trial for insufficiency of evidence, this inference of intent to commit theft is not a trial level presumption. As the Court explained through Judge Miller in Hardesty v. State, 656 S.W.2d 73 (Tex.Crim.App.1983), concerning another so-called “presumption” (the “presumption” of theft arising from unexplained possession of recently stolen property), this is only a “permissible inference,” i.e., a deduction from the proven facts that the fact-finder may draw from the circumstances of the case without the aid of any rule of law, but which it is not obligated to so draw. Hardesty, 656 S.W.2d at 76. It is not conclusive, nor does it shift the burden of proof, as a true presumption would do. Hardesty, 656 S.W.2d at 77. Appellant’s entry into a habitation at night is simply a circumstance that perhaps indicates guilt, and from which the jury may or may not infer an intent to commit theft. The State still has the burden of proving that element of the offense, circumstantially or otherwise.

The Court of Criminal Appeals recently reversed a case wherein the charge to the jury was almost identical to the charge in this case. Browning v. State, 720 S.W.2d 504 (Tex.Crim.App.1986). The trial court in Browning had instructed the jury that, “[o]ur law provides that the act of breaking and entering a habitation at nighttime raises a presumption that the act was done with the intent to commit theft.” Id. at 505. In reviewing this instruction, the Court of Criminal Appeals stated as follows:

In any given case the jury could make any number of reasonable inferences. But when the trial court, the only source of law the jury has, picks out only one such inference and instructs the jury that that one, though rebuttable, is a presumption provided by law, the court gives the force of law to that one possible inference. In fact, neither statute nor case law provides such a ‘presumption’ at the trial level. Instructing the jury that it does constitutes, in effect, a comment on the weight of the evidence. We do not hold that the jury may not make such an inference, nor that an appellate court in reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence may not assume that the jury made such a reasonable inference. The error lies in instructing the jury that they may apply such an inference.

Id. at 507 (emphasis in original) (footnote omitted).

We find that the instant charge, as submitted to the jury, is likewise an improper comment on the weight of the evidence and is error. Therefore, under Browning, we must determine whether the appellant has sustained harm as a result of the court’s error.

Because appellant failed to object to the court’s charge at the time of trial, he will be entitled to reversal only if the error was “fundamental.” Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157 (Tex.Crim.App.1984) (op. on reh’g). When determining whether fundamental error occurred, this Court must con[417]*417sider the entire charge and the record as a whole, and will reverse only if the error is so egregious and created such harm that the appellant was deprived of a fair and impartial trial. Almanza, 686 S.W.2d at 171.

Briefly, the facts in this case show that on September 20, 1984, complainant testified that she woke up suddenly at 4 a.m. and saw appellant in her bedroom. She said that when she saw him, he was falling over a box in the bedroom. She testified that “I bawled him out,” and he “kind of looked at me and looked around the room and looked over the table and I had some papers and my purse on it and then my husband started waking up and he went on out the window.” She then testified that she went outside and saw him on the ground, and that he mumbled something but she couldn’t understand what he said.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
725 S.W.2d 414, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 6305, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pennock-v-state-texapp-1987.