Court Opinion

ID: 9666255
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:09:00.471746+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:25.482020
License: Public Domain

ON APPELLANT’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
DICE, Commissioner.
Appellant strenuously insists that the evidence was insufficient to establish the two prior convictions alleged for enhancement.
It is first contended that although the two prior convictions were stipulated, appellant was not identified as the person so convicted. Franklin v. State, 154 Tex.Cr.R. 375, 227 S.W.2d 814, is cited and relied upon in support of appellant’s contention.
In our original opinion we held that when appellant, indicted under the name of Michael Daniel Conley, personally and by counsel stipulated that Michael Daniel Conley had been convicted in the prior cases alleged for enhancement he thereby stipulated that he was the same person. We adhere to such holding. It should also be pointed out that, in addition to the stipulation, the state introduced in evidence certain authenticated prison records which contained, besides the judgments and sentences in the two cases, a photograph and physical description of the inmate, Michael Daniel Conley, named therein. With the photographs and physical description before them, the jury could conclude that appellant, who was present in the courtroom, was the person named in the two judgments of conviction. Such fact, alone, distinguishes this case from Franklin v. State, supra, cited by appellant. Also, in Franklin v. State, supra, the accused, who was prosecuted as “Yvonne Franklin alias Viola Ducrest,” did not stipulate that the person named in the indictment had been previously convicted but merely stipulated that one Yvonne Franklin was the same person as Viola Ducrest, the latter being the name of the defendant in the two prior judgments of conviction.
It is next contended that there was a fatal variance between the allegation and the proof as to the date of one of the prior convictions. Having stipulated that the prior conviction was on the date (May 29, 1957) alleged in the indictment, appellant is in no position to urge such contention.
The contention now urged by appellant in his motion for rehearing that reading to the jury and offering proof of the allegations of the indictment charging the prior convictions, before determining the issue of his guilt of the primary offense, constituted a denial of due process has been rejected by this court. See: Crocker v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 385 S.W.2d 392, and the many cases there cited. See, also: Breen v. Beto, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, 341 F.2d 96.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.
Opinion approved by the court.