Court Opinion

ID: 9764572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:27:40.574926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:52:14.475566
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
MORRISON, Judge.
Appellant’s counsel, by able brief and argument, has questioned the soundness of that portion of our original opinion in which we said, “It is apparent that the trial court construed appellant’s motion as a request to have the names of the 32 veniremen drawn from the entire list of the central jury panel.”
In re-examining the soundness of this conclusion, we find the following qualification to Bill of Exception No. 1:
“The Court certifies that when the defendant’s Motion to shake the jury was presented that the Court entered the following order relative thereto: ‘This Motion was presented to the Court *243after the jury panel was in the Court room at one o’clock P. M. this date (June 11th, 1951) the case having been called at nine A. M. this morning, and no such request was made by the defendant. The other courts in Dallas County, Texas, have already used a majority of the jurors from the central jury room, thus this motion comes to late to be acted on. (Signed) Robert A. Hall, Judge.’ ”
It is thus apparent that the court made known to appellant that he considered the motion as one aimed at those jurors in the central jury room and not as one aimed at the 32 men then in the court room. When such an interpretation of the motion was made known to the appellant, and he made no move to notify the court that he meant something other than that which had been ruled upon by the court, then appellant must be held to have waived that something else.
Suppose this had been an oral objection and the court had not heard appellant’s counsel correctly. Could we rightly say that counsel was under no duty to make his objection comprehensible to the court when it was obvious that the court did not understand it?
It is apparent to us that counsel and the court both considered the motion as being aimed at the jurors in the central jury room.
We do not feel that, since the case has reached us on appeal, we should give the motion a different interpretation from that placed upon it in the trial.
We did not discuss Bill of Exception No. 10, which complains of jury argument. There, it is shown that the prosecutor said:
“Will you consider, gentlemen, what these men have to say about it? (Speaking of the State’s Witnesses.) Or will you consider gentlemen, the testimony of a bunch of convicted witnesses, I tell you perjured testimony.”
The complained of portion thereof was the characterization of the testimony of appellant’s witnesses as being perjured. We must determine whether this argument was manifestly improper, harmful and prejudicial, or whether a mandatory provision of the statute is violated, or whether it injected some new and harmful fact into the case. On the other hand, we *244must determine whether it was an expresison of the prosecutor’s opinion based upon the evidence.
On cross-examination of the appellant’s witnesses, the state had developed that some of them had been convicted of various offenses.
Appellant seeks to draw a parallel between the case at bar and Davis v. State, 54 Tex. Cr. R. 236, 114 S. W. 366. In the Davis case, a Dr. McKinzey had testified for the accused. In his closing argument, the prosecutor stated as a fact that, of his personal knowledge, juries in other cases had paid no attention to Dr. McKinzey’s testimony.
To us, the distinction between the two cases is apparent. In the Davis case, the prosecutor told the jury that the people generally had no confidence in Dr. McKinzey’s veracity. In the case at bar, the prosecutor told the jury that the appellant’s witnesses were “convicted witnesses” and concluded from that fact that their testimony, in the case at bar, had been untrue.
It is noted that the court sustained the objection to the above argument and twice told the jury to disregard the same.
We find no reversible error reflected in this bill.
Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this cause originally, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.