Court Opinion

ID: 9681792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:56:35.806406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:35.899005
License: Public Domain

MORRISON, Judge
(dissenting).
I cannot agree the conviction should be reversed because the court refused to in*588struct the jury to acquit if they believed appellant thought he was telling the truth.
Appellant does not contend that he believed his testimony at the former trial painted a true picture of the events. In other words his defense is not that he believed that testimony was factually true. This is the defense my brethren gratuitously bestow upon him.
Rather, appellant contends that he was nervous and that he did not properly understand the tenor and scope of the questions propounded to him. He contends his answers were literally true answers to the questions as he understood them, not factually true. This defense was adequately submitted to the jury, as my brother Douglas points out, through the court’s charge that “A statement made through inadvertence or under agitation or by mistake is not perjury.”
I dissent.