Court Opinion

ID: 9681778
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:56:27.539887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:35.880741
License: Public Domain

*443ON appellant’s motion for rehearing.
DAVIDSON, Judge.
Appellant. renews his insistence that the facts which he claims were stipulated upon hearing of the motion for new trial should be considered by us. He presents, in that connection, the affidavit of the county attorney showing that he, through inadvertence, failed to sign the stipulation. The county attorney also certified that the facts set forth in the stipulation are true.
The facts so stipulated, and upon which reliance is had by the appellant, show that during the trial of the case the appellant was not called upon by the trial court to orally enter a plea to the accusation, and that appellant’s counsel knew of such fact and purposely and intentionally refrained from calling the trial court’s attention to such failure to plead.
Appellant’s counsel did not disclose such fact to the trial court until after the verdict had been reached, and thereafter urged as a ground for a new trial the fact that appellant had not entered a plea to the accusation.
The right to enter a plea before the jury may be waived by the refusal to plead, in which event the trial court enters a plea of not guilty. Art. 500, C. C. P.
This is exactly what the trial court did for the appellant when, in his charge to the jury, he told them that “the defendant has entered his plea of not guilty.”
When the trial court delivered to appellant his charge to the jury for exception and objections — which charge contained the statement that appellant had pleaded “not guilty,” it became the duty of the appellant to then call such error to the trial court’s attention and make known his desire to openly plead before the jury. Not having availed himself of that privilege, the conclusion must inevitably follow that same was waived.
Appellant insists that, under such construction, the issue before the jury by the plea of not guilty was not drawn until the charge was read to the jury; that no evidence was introduced thereafter; and, hence, that he, appellant, stands as having been convicted upon a plea of not guilty without the introduction of testimony.
*444If appellant desired the evidence to be reintroduced after the plea had been entered, -he should have made known such fact to the trial court but not having done so, he must occupy the position of having also waived that right.
We are constrained to conclude that a correct conclusion was reached originally.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.
Opinion approved by the court.