Page 31 - TPA Journal January February 2023

A criminal conviction cannot stand unless it is was pending or in progress and that he (3) altered,
supported by legally sufficient evidence. destroyed, or concealed, (4) drugs, (5) with intent
Evidence supporting a conviction is legally suffi- to impair their verity, legibility, or availability as
cient if a rational trier of fact could have found evidence in the investigation or official proceed-
each element of the offense beyond a reasonable ing. While the State argued at trial that Appellant’s
doubt. The trier of fact is the exclusive judge of actions altered, concealed, and destroyed the mar-
the credibility and weight of the evidence and is ijuana, the only two theories of liability presented
allowed to draw any reasonable inference from the to this Court for review are whether Appellant
evidence so long as it is supported by the record. altered or destroyed the marijuana. Because we
When reviewing the evidence, we consider the conclude that the evidence is legally sufficient to
combined and cumulative force of all the admitted show that Appellant altered the marijuana, we do
evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. not address the sufficiency of the evidence to
Direct evidence and circumstantial evidence are prove destruction.
equally probative, and circumstantial evidence
alone may be sufficient to uphold a conviction. The court of appeals held that the proof of “alter-
The evidence need not negate every conceivable ation” is insufficient because there is no evidence
alternative to a defendant’s guilt to be sufficient, about whether mixing loose marijuana with water
and a conviction will be upheld if the evidence is and human waste changed the chemical structure
sufficient under any theory authorized in the of the marijuana. It appears that the court of
charge. appeals’ conclusion was based on this Court’s
decision in Stahmann v. State. In that case, the
To determine whether the evidence is legally suf- State alleged that Stahmann altered a pill bottle by
ficient, we compare the evidence produced at trial moving it when he threw it over a fence after he
to “the essential elements of the offense as defined was involved in a car accident. In our analysis in
by the hypothetically correct jury charge.” A that case, we noted that, “when a defendant is
hypothetically correct jury charge “accurately sets alleged to have altered a physical thing,” “‘alter’
out the law, is authorized by the indictment, does means that the defendant changed or modified the
not unnecessarily increase the State’s burden of thing itself . . . .” We never said, however, that
proof or unnecessarily restrict the State’s theories the State had to put on evidence that the pill bot-
of liability, and adequately describes the particular tle had been chemically altered to prove that
offense for which the defendant was tried.” The Stahmann altered it. “Alter” is interpreted accord-
“law as authorized by the indictment” includes the ing to its common usage. We have said that word
statutory elements of the offense and those ele- in its common usage can mean “to change; make
ments as modified by the indictment. different; modify.” Another court of appeals has
relied on dictionaries defining “alter” as, “to make
The indictment alleged that Appellant “did then different without changing into something else”
and there knowing that an investigation or official and “to make different in some particular, as size,
proceeding is pending or in progress alter, destroy, style, course, or the like; modify.” The common
or conceal a thing, to wit: drugs, with intent to thread among the definitions is that “alter” has an
impair its verity, legibility, or availability as evi- expansive meaning in common usage that belies
dence in the investigation or official proceeding.” the court of appeals’ construction requiring proof
Therefore, the hypothetically correct jury charge of a change in the chemical composition of the
required the State to prove that (1) Appellant, (2) marijuana. A rational juror interpreting the word
knew that an investigation or official proceeding “alter” in its common usage could reasonably con-

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