Court Opinion

ID: 9682005
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:03:20.935853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:36.974121
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
WOODLEY, Judge.
Appellant complains of the disposition made of his bills of exception, and seems to consider that we should discuss each of them. To do so would avail nothing, and would unduly lengthen this opinion.
Over the objection of appellant, an almost empty whiskey bottle found in his car by the patrolman was admitted in evidence, together with the officer’s testimony as to its finding.
One bill of exception reveals that appellant’s objection was-directed to the time and place the car was searched, and not the search itself as shown by the following statement of counsel for appellant in connection with his objection “We don’t object to anything he found then and there when he was arrested, but anything found later in car we object to it.”
The car was in the control and possession of the officers between the arrest and the finding of the bottle therein, and the right to search the car remained the same.
It was improper for the county attorney to ask the sheriff how many times he had arrested a man named Mule Stover and to ask the witness Stover if he didn’t spend six months in jail for hot check violation (referring to an incident in 1926).
But the court promptly sustained appellant’s objection and instructed the jury not to consider the same.
Remarks of the county attorney in his argument likewise are of questionable propriety, such as the reference to Stover’s testimony as “a trumped up story they have hatched up to mislead you.”
However, the court promptly instructed the jury to disregard such objectionable argument.
*616The jury determined the issue as to appellant’s condition of sobriety against appellant’s contention, but assessed the minimum punishment and it appears that they desired to assess even less..
We are unable to agree that the jury was influenced by the questions or arguments so withdrawn, or that the court should have declared a mistrial because of such matters.
The appeal having been properly disposed of, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.
Opinion approved by the court.