Court Opinion

ID: 9770668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:18:51.946222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:37:36.251202
License: Public Domain

WOODLEY, Presiding Judge
(concurring).
The Formal Bills of Exception were filed with the clerk on February 19, 1964, and were examined and approved by Trial Judge J. Frank Wilson on February 28, 1964, “ * * * with the following explanation, and qualification. Any matter of fact or recitation set forth in the Bill which are at variance from the facts shown in the official record in this case as prepared by the Court Clerk and the Court Reporter are not certified by- me as true, but are certified by me as being contention— of the defendant.”
The appellant took no exception to the court’s qualifications, nor did he agree thereto and he filed no bystander’s bills. By the qualifications of his formal bills, the appellant was relegated to his informal bills.
If, however, the court’s qualification was “tantamount to no action at all,” as held by the majority in Moore v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 380 S.W.2d 626, the formal bills *625must be considered as approved without qualification and as certifying reversible error.
Bill No. 1 considered as approved without the court’s qualification certifies that the court deprived the defendant of due process of law under the Fifth and Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and Art. 1, Sec. 10 and Sec. IS of the Texas Constitution, Vernon’s Ann.St., and Sec. 2(a) of Art. 759a of Vernon’s Annotated Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
Also it certifies that the rejected testimony the defendant offered and sought to offer of the witness Jerry Leonard “ * * would have been admissible to show interest, bias and motive by the said Jerry Leonard to testify falsely against the defendant, and such facts which defendant sought to offer would have impeached the testimony of the said Jerry Leonard.”
Bill No. 3, considered as approved without qualification, certifies that in reprimanding defendant’s counsel in front of the jury, the defendant’s rights were prejudiced in the manner stated “and the harmful effect of (the court’s) comments were such that they could not be cured or removed by instructions to the jury.”
Bill No. 4, as originally presented, certifies that by refusing to require the F.B.I. agents to produce from their files material evidence favorable to the defendant, in the form of photographs, “ * * * the defendant was harmed and was such error on the part of the Court as to require a reversal of this cause.”
Bill No. S, without the court’s qualification, certifies that the trial court allowed introduction over defendant’s objection of some $12,499.65 in currency “ * * * and in as much as there does not appear anywhere in the record any direct evidence showing said currency to have ever been in the possession of the defendant, such admission of the currency was such error as to deny defendant a fair trial.”
It is the view of the writer that the Moore case is wrong and the majority opinion herein is correct in not considering the Formal Bills of Exception as though approved without qualifications.