Court Opinion

ID: 9685091
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:23:01.070564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:02.215590
License: Public Domain

ON appellant’s motion for rehearing.
MORRISON, Judge.
Appellant has presented this court a forceful motion for rehearing, urging us to reverse the action of the trial court in refusing to grant her a new trial. We are asked to do this on the grounds that appellant was without counsel, was influenced *91to plead guilty by threats of officers, and was in ill health on the day her pleas were received.
At the outset we would like to observe that in all the cases which have come to our attention in which this court granted the relief herein prayed for, it was made to appear that either the appellant was not guilty of the offense charged or the punishment assessed was grossly excessive.
With this principle in mind, we approach the solution of this case. Nothing in the record raises any question in our minds as to appellant’s guilt of the nine liquor law offenses against her, heard in Judge Price’s court on August 25, 1950. We then move to the question of whether the punishment was excessive. We are offered no criterion with which we may measure the particular judgment in any of these cases. Based upon judgments in liquor law violations from this court and other courts throughout the state, we cannot say that this was excessive.
Out of deference to counsel’s able efforts, we go further, however, and discuss the particular grounds urged. We first decide whether appellant exercised due diligence in securing the services of an attorney. In order that the business of our courts ■may move forward in an orderly fashion, we must demand that each defendant exert the maximum of effort, in this respect. Appellant would not accept the advice given her by Mr. Flock, her first attorney, and he withdrew from the cases with the court’s permission.
Appellant, acting through her husband who advised her throughout the entire transaction, was sent to another attorney and did, in fact, employ him. The only reason he did not represent her was that she did not pay his fee. This being a misdemeanor case, we have no authority to go further into the matter.
We next come to the question of threats allegedly made by officers which are claimed to have induced her to plead guilty. We are asked to believe that an officer, standing within three feet of the judge, threatened to kill appellant and her husband if appellant feigned sickness any further, that appellant’s husband to whom the threat was allegedly made remained silent when he could have appealed to the court for aid and was thereby influenced into causing appellant to plead guilty some four days later and after he had conferred with another attorney. *92Evidently the able trial judge did not believe that this had occurred.
On the question of illness on the day the guilty pleas were entered, appellant herself nowhere claims that she made known to the court such a fact and, having remained silent at that time, thereby led the court to believe her to be in full possession of her faculties. It will also be noted that the court heard conflicting evidence as to appellant’s health and decided that issue of fact against her. We perceive no abuse of his discretion.
We agree with appellant that the trial court had no authority to qualify her bills of exception with matters from his own personal knowledge and not occurring during the course of the trial, he not having offered himself as a witness on the hearing. Moses Swidan v. State, No. 25,200, (Page 29 of this volume). We have not considered the same in our deliberations.
We feel that our original disposition of this matter was correct. Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.