Court Opinion

ID: 9672729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:59:19.433897+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:17.998509
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
I agree entirely with Judge Vance’s observation that “[h]ad the appellant stated that Janice Chaffe had given him the money order and that Janice Chaffe was someone that he knew, the evidence would have been sufficient to sustain the conviction for forgery. See Golden v. State, 475 S.W.2d 273, 274 (Tex.Cr.App.1971).” Williams v. State, 646 S.W.2d 630, 631 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1983). (Emphasis supplied.) This is so because the State’s evidence that “Janice Chaffe” does not exist would then have shown such an assertion to have been false, thus establishing a conscious deception on appellant’s part, which in turn constitutes circumstantial evidence that he knew the money order was forged. The statement appellant did make — that he had done some work for an unnamed lady in Mesquite and that she had paid him with the money order — is not necessarily proved to be a conscious deception by the State’s evidence that “Janice Chaffe” does not exist. Thus, appellant’s statement together with the proof of “Janice Chaffe’s” nonexistence fails to amount to circumstantial evidence that he knew he was passing a forgery.
The majority reasons that appellant’s statement was “controverted” by evidence that the money order he passed had been stolen from the 7-11 store four days previously. At p. 490. However, the evidence does not show who took the money order. That the money order was taken by some unidentified person does not rule out the possibility that it could have been given to appellant sometime during the previous four days by a lady in Mesquite in exchange for work he did for her. This lady could have held herself out to be “Janice Chaffe.” The State’s proof does not show that appellant should have known or did know that she was not.
The statement appellant made to the store clerk was “controverted” by neither the proof that the maker was fictitious nor by the fact that the money order was stolen four days earlier. No conscious deception is shown. The court of appeals was correct in refusing to affirm this conviction on the basis of Golden v. State, supra, and its judgment should be upheld.
The majority observes the facts of Colburn v. State, 501 S.W.2d 680 (Tex.Cr.App.1973) to be “almost a mirror image of the facts in the instant case.” At 489. However, the critical difference, as noted in the majority’s opinion, is that the defendant in Colburn, as he passed the instrument, “gave specific assurance that it was a good check.” Id. Judge Sparling, in his dissenting opinion in the court of appeals felt this difference “to be insignificant because reason dictates that any person who passes a forged document vouches, by implication, that the instrument is genuine.” Williams, supra, at 632. If Judge Sparling’s analysis is correct, then proof of a fictitious maker standing alone should be sufficient, as a matter of strict liability, to prove guilty knowledge. But as I have endeavored to make clear, the function that proof *492of a fictitious maker serves in the cases relied on by the majority is only to demonstrate that a particular statement the accused has made must necessarily be a conscious deception. It is from the deception that guilty knowledge may be inferred.
The specific assurance of the authenticity of the check in Colburn is significant in that an accused would presumably have no reason to make such an emphatic statement absent some motive to deceive. Contrary to Judge Sparling’s belief, it is the very express assurance of what would otherwise be implicitly understood that, in combination with the fact that the maker proved to be fictitious, constitutes circumstantial evidence from which guilty knowledge may be inferred.
In the instant case the State proved only that “Janice Chaffe” was fictitious. No statement or other circumstance was elicited which, in combination with this fact, will support the inference that appellant knew she was fictitious and therefore knew he was passing a forged instrument. Still extant is the reasonable alternative hypothesis that the money order was passed to appellant by a lady in Mesquite who stole it herself and then held herself out to appellant as “Janice Chaffe.” For this reason appellant’s conviction ought to be reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered, just as the court of appeals ordered. See Stuebgen v. State, 547 S.W.2d 29 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Crittenden v. State, 671 S.W.2d 527 (Tex.Cr.App.1984).
Because the majority fails to affirm the judgment of the court of appeals, I dissent.
TEAGUE and MILLER, JJ„ join.