Court Opinion

ID: 9649225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:45:43.006151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:09.075413
License: Public Domain

DOUGLAS, Judge
(dissenting).
This conviction should be affirmed. It should be remembered that this evidence was introduced at the penalty stage of the trial after the jury had already found the appellant guilty. Article 38.27, V.A. C.C.P., provides:
“It is competent to give evidence of handwriting by comparison, made by experts or by the jury. Proof by comparison only shall not be sufficient to establish the handwriting of a witness who denies his signature under oath.”
The jury waiver in the present case signed by the appellant was introduced before the jury. Signatures on jury waivers and stipulations of Ronald E. Cain in five previous convictions were introduced for the jury’s consideration as provided for under Article 38.27, supra.
In addition, a photograph and known fingerprints of the appellant were introduced along with fingerprints identified by a qualified fingerprint examiner to be identical to those of the appellant in one prior conviction, Cause No. 117,902 in Criminal District Court No. S of Harris County, Texas. The judgment and sentence were dated March 3, 1966. Appellant’s Texas Department of Corrections No. 118455 was certified with this cause number and was introduced without objection.
The jury had before it proof of the signatures of jury waivers in Causes numbered 118,526, 118,527, 118,528 and 118,529, all in Criminal District Court No. 5 of Harris County and stipulations on these four prior convictions, all dated March 3, 1966.1
After the above evidence concerning the prior convictions, the appellant called his father as a witness and he testified on direct examination that Ronald was just a youngster of seventeen when he went to the Texas Department of Corrections on those offenses.
All of these prior convictions were had on the same day. That evidence with the testimony of his father that he went to the Department of Corrections on “those offenses” after the records were i.n evidence shows no harm or reversible error.
If there is any question about the certainty that the appellant was the person previously convicted, all one has to do is look at the records in this Court. This Court may take judicial notice of the records before it. Bridges v. State, 468 S.W.2d 451. See 23 Tex.Jur.2d, Evidence, Section 29, page 51. The case of Cain v. State, 467 S.W.2d 436 (decided May 26, 1971), shows that the same five prior convictions, and others, were used at the penalty stage in the trial in Galveston County. The fingerprints and photograph of Ronald Eugene Cain were admitted in evidence at that trial along with the judgments and sentences in the five cases from Criminal District Court No. 5 of Harris County (Nos. 118,526, 118,527, 118,528, 118,529 and 117,097). Certified copies of two other prior convictions not used in the present cases were admitted. The appellant’s Texas Department of Corrections Number 118455 appears on the records of the previous convictions introduced in the Galveston County case and on one of the causes introduced in the present case.
Further, Ronald Eugene Cain during the Galveston County case was found to be the same person convicted in Cause No. 118,527 *861in Harris County when the court cumulated the sentence with the latter cause.
It should be noted that in the Galveston case the fingerprints in Cause No. 118,527 were shown to be the same as those in the other four cases that were used in the present case. Further, the records clerk certified that the Texas Department of Corrections Number 118455 (of the appellant) was the same on all cases used in Galveston County and on the one case in Harris County where the Department of Corrections records were used.
We should not reverse a case where there was sufficient proof considering all the evidence at the penalty stage of the trial including that of the appellant’s father and where no harm has been shown, and especially where certified copies of the records show the appellant was the same person previously convicted.
I would affirm the conviction.

. In Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 266-267, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 1953, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178, Mr. Justice Brennan speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States stated: “A mere handwriting exemplar, in contrast to the content of what is written, like the body itself is an identifiable physical characteristic. * * * ”