Appellant, Arthur Lee Williams, was convicted of tampering with physical evidence under section 37.09(a)(1) of the Texas Penal Code and sentenced to twenty-five years of confinement. (1) Appellant appealed and the court of appeals affirmed. We granted review to consider the legal sufficiency of the evidence. We will affirm.
I. FACTS
A police officer patrolling a high-crime neighborhood followed a car occupied by Appellant and Darrell Fields. Fields parked on the wrong side of the street in front of a house known by the officer to be a crack house. The officer, Michael Stowe, stopped behind the car. As Officer Stowe approached the car, he observed Appellant in the front passenger seat, moving his hands around his waistband, which caused Officer Stowe to suspect that Appellant could be concealing a weapon. Officer Stowe performed a weapons pat-down on both Fields and Appellant. During the pat-down of Appellant, Officer Stowe heard an object hit the ground. Looking down, Officer Stowe recognized the fallen object as an intact crack pipe. In that instant, Appellant stomped on the crack pipe, breaking it into pieces.
At trial, the
State presented the pieces of the pipe Officer Stowe was able to collect that
night, including a copper mesh filter and broken glass. The State also offered,
as a demonstrative exhibit, an intact crack pipe to show the jury how the
remnants appeared in their former physical state. The jury convicted Appellant
of tampering with physical evidence, and the court assessed a sentence of
twenty-five years of confinement. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 37.09(a)(1) (Vernon
2003). Appellant appealed, arguing seven issues, four of which addressed the
legal and factual sufficiency of the evidence establishing that he knew the
crack pipe was evidence in the investigation and that the crack pipe was
destroyed within the meaning of the law. Williams v. State, No.
09-06-103-CR,
We granted Appellant's petition for discretionary review to determine whether the court of appeals erred in holding that the evidence was legally sufficient to establish the following two points: (1) Appellant's knowledge that a crack pipe was evidence in the criminal investigation that was in progress, and (2) that Appellant destroyed evidence, specifically a crack pipe, within the meaning of the law.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
In evaluating the
legal sufficiency of the evidence, we consider the evidence in the light most
favorable to the jury's verdict and determine whether a rational jury could have
found the defendant guilty of all of the elements of the offense beyond a
reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia,
III. TEXAS PENAL CODE SECTION 37.09(a)(1)
Three elements define the offense of tampering with physical evidence: (1) knowing that an investigation or official proceeding is pending or in progress, (2) a person alters, destroys, or conceals any record, document, or thing, (3) with intent to impair its verity, legibility, or availability as evidence in the investigation or official proceeding. § 37.09(a)(1).
The three
elements of section 37.09(a)(1) include "two different culpable mental
states"-knowledge and intent. Stewart v. State,
Appellant's indictment specifically alleged the following: "knowing that an investigation was in progress, to-wit: checking [Appellant] for weapons, [Appellant] intentionally and knowingly destroy[ed] drug paraphernalia, to-wit: a crack pipe, with intent to impair its verity and availability as evidence in the investigation."
IV. KNOWLEDGE THAT THE CRACK PIPE WAS EVIDENCE
Appellant
challenges the legal sufficiency of the evidence establishing his knowledge that
the crack pipe was evidence in the criminal investigation that was in progress.
He asserts that the State failed to prove that an investigation was in progress
in which the broken crack pipe might have served as evidence. Using the analysis
presented in Pannell v. State,
In this case, the court of
appeals accepted Pannell's statutory interpretation, requiring
Appellant's awareness that the crack pipe was evidence in a criminal
investigation that was in progress. In order to find this element satisfied, the
court of appeals decided that the investigation-in-progress transformed from a
weapons investigation to a drugs investigation the moment the crack pipe fell
from Appellant's pants. Williams,
Other cases
following Pannell have similarly analyzed the events leading up to the
alteration, destruction, or concealment of evidence in order to classify the
investigation. See Whitlock v.
State, No. 12-05-00206-CR,
But the indictment in this
case is not silent as to the title of the investigation. The problem with the
court's analysis is that it ignores the language of the indictment, which
specifically names the investigation-in-progress a "weapons" investigation, not
"an investigation for drugs and/or drug paraphernalia."
(2)
Williams, 2007
Tex. App. LEXIS 892 at *7. We do not need to change
the title of the investigation from a weapons investigation to a drugs
investigation in order to find Appellant in violation of section 37.09(a)(1).
Pannell requires that change, but the statute does not.
Pannell grafts a fourth element onto section 37.09(a)(1), and a narrow
reading of the statute does not support Pannell's conclusion that a
person must be "aware that the thing he altered, destroyed, or concealed was
evidence in the investigation as it existed at the time of the alteration,
destruction, or concealment." Pannell, In conclusion,
Appellant's challenge depends upon an additional element to section 37.09(a)(1),
introduced by Pannell. This element is not supported by the language of
the statute and, therefore, Appellant's challenge has no statutory foundation.
Moreover, Pannell's fourth element renders the statute impractical and
unfit for its purpose. Appellant's
argument highlights the lack of coordination within the indictment, which names
a crack pipe as evidence in a weapons investigation. But the title of the
investigation and the evidence destroyed need not match in an indictment
alleging an offense under section 37.09(a)(1), as long as the offender destroyed
a thing with the intent to impair its availability as evidence in an
investigation that he knows is in progress. In this case, the elements of the
offense are satisfied. During a weapons pat-down, Appellant stepped on the crack
pipe the instant it fell into the officer's view, crushing it into pieces.
Considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, a
rational jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that, knowing a weapons
investigation was in progress, Appellant destroyed a crack pipe with the
conscious objective to impair its availability as evidence in the
investigation. V. DESTRUCTION OF
EVIDENCE Appellant challenges the
legal sufficiency of the evidence establishing that he destroyed evidence, the
crack pipe, within the meaning of the law. Though section 37.09(a)(1) provides
for alteration, destruction, or concealment, the indictment alleged only that
Appellant destroyed the crack pipe. Appellant argues that the crack pipe was not
destroyed, as defined by Spector v. State, In
Spector, the appellant tore a marihuana cigarette in two and "threw the
pieces toward a ditch." Id. at 946. On appeal, she asserted that the
evidence could not have been destroyed because the contents of the cigarette
were used to convict her. Id. at 945. In support of the charge, the
State argued that the cigarette had been destroyed because the recovered
contents had "lost their identity as a cigarette." Id. at 945-46. In
its analysis, the court of appeals announced two definitions of "destroyed" and
ultimately concluded that the torn cigarette was not destroyed. Id. at
946. The first definition stated that "something is destroyed . . . when its
evidentiary value is destroyed." Id. Without a loss of evidentiary
value, changes in physical form "are mere attempts to destroy or
alterations." Id. The second definition provided for the situation
where a part of an object is recovered. In such a case, the evidence is
destroyed "when the part recovered has less evidentiary value than the whole."
Id. In Appellant's case, the
court of appeals determined that the collected pieces of the shattered pipe
satisfied the test prescribed by Spector and that the crack pipe was
destroyed. In concluding that the recovered parts had less evidentiary value
than the whole crack pipe, the court of appeals relied heavily on its assessment
that the crack pipe in its present state was "no longer recognizable."
Williams, As it is
applied, Spector's two-part definition for finding a thing "destroyed"
under section 37.09(a)(1) inhibits the State from offering collected remains as
evidence at trial and, in effect, requires absolute nonexistence. The first
definition, requiring that a thing have no evidentiary value in order to be
"destroyed," renders the State unable to offer physical evidence of the item at
issue. If the State introduces any remains as evidence, an essential element of
the offense disappears because, upon being admitted, the remains have
evidentiary value, and thus, are not "destroyed." In apparent contradiction to
the first definition, the second definition in Spector allows recovered
parts of a destroyed thing to have evidentiary value, if they have less
evidentiary value than the whole. But according to the analysis in that case, a
torn cigarette thrown in a ditch does not have less evidentiary value than a
complete cigarette. So it remains unclear how anything could be "destroyed"
under either part of this standard when parts are recovered. To interpret the
use of "destroys" in section 37.09(a)(1), "we necessarily focus our attention on
the literal text of the statute." Boykin v. State, Not one of
Webster's definitions mentions a complete lack of physical existence. A
demolished, ruined, or killed thing still has remains. And, contrary to the
definition in Spector, the remains of a destroyed object can still have
evidentiary value. We interpret section 37.09(a)(1) to mean that a destroyed
thing has been ruined and rendered useless. This interpretation of "destroy" is,
as required, distinct from "conceal" and from "alter," which Webster's
Dictionary defines as: "to change; make different; modify." Id. at 52.
Moreover, our interpretation of destroyed to mean ruined and rendered useless
echoes a factor suggested by the State in Spector and the court of
appeals in this case: that a thing is destroyed when it has lost its identity
and is no longer recognizable. Williams, In this case, the
crack pipe was ruined and rendered useless when Appellant stepped on it and
broke it into pieces. Officer Stowe testified that he was unable to retrieve
every piece of the shattered crack pipe, and even if the recovered pieces could
have been glued together in an attempt to reconstruct the evidence to its former
physical state, it would be less than a complete crack pipe. That the State
introduced the recovered pieces only after showing a complete crack pipe as a
demonstrative exhibit indicates that the glass shards and copper mesh filter had
lost their identity as a crack pipe and were not recognizable as a crack pipe.
Therefore, the crack pipe was destroyed. VI.
CONCLUSION Considering the evidence
in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, a rational jury could have
found beyond a reasonable doubt that Appellant destroyed a crack pipe, knowing a
weapons investigation was in progress, with intent to impair its availability as
evidence in the investigation. The judgment of the court
of appeals is affirmed.
Meyers,
J. Delivered:
November 26, 2008 Publish
1. Unless otherwise specified, all future references to
sections refer to the Texas Penal Code.
2. Because the name of the investigation can be considered
an extra detail in an indictment alleging a violation under section 37.09(a)(1),
this situation could be analyzed under surplusage law, had that rule not been
overruled by this Court in Gollihar v. State,
1. to demolish; to tear down; as, to
destroy a house, to destroy a
city.
2. to ruin; to bring to naught; to spoil
completely; as, to destroy a scheme, to
destroy
a government, to
destroy one's happiness.
3. to take away the
utility of; to make useless.
4. to put an end to;
to do away with.
5. to
kill.
6. to neutralize the effect
of.
7. to confute; to disprove.
Noah Webster, Webster's New Twentieth Century
Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 495 (2d ed. 1983).