Court Opinion

ID: 9767782
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:26:53.455454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:32.992800
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
*363MORRISON, Judge.
In an able motion appellant has directed our attention to several bills of exception which will be considered in the order presented.
Bill of Exception No. 21 complains of the trial court’s failure to charge that a bank check was not money and that a conviction could be predicated only on proof of a conversion of money. With the principle of law announced in this requested charge we are in accord, but for the question to be properly before us for determination the bill of exception presenting the same must show on its face, either by a certificate of the judge or a recitation in the bill, that a necessity existed or that the facts warranted the giving of such a charge. The bill sets forth a requested charge and nothing more. This is not sufficient. McKee v. State, 100 Tex.Cr.R. 501, 272 S.W. 191.
Bill of Exception No. 22 is directed to the failure of the trial court to give a charge defining money. Appellant cites us to Lewis v. State, 28 Tex.Cr.App. 140, 12 S.W. 736, wherein this court held, in 1889, that it was incumbent upon the trial court to define money in a case where the indictment charged “current money of the United States” so as to distinguish the same from bank notes then commonly in circulation. In the case at bar appellant was charged with converting “money.” A review of the decisions of this court since the rendition of the opinion in the Lewis case, together with a consideration of the reason, or lack of reason, for such rule leads us to the conclusion that where an indictment charges simply the taking of “money” or “current money of the United States” that no definition thereof is necessary in the charge.
Appellant’s next three “points of error” are not identified with bills of exception which makes the necessity for a discussion thereof doubtful. However, we feel that they may be answered by a re-statement of the state’s case as we see it. The state first showed that the sum of $9,608.28 had been received by appellant in his official capacity. It then showed that the books of the city under his control had been so kept or altered to show that he had received instead of the above sum only the sum of $5,852.85. It was then shown that certain tax receipts and records of the city had been altered by appellant so as to give him a balance. Finally, it was shown that appellant admitted that he had converted to his own use a certain item of two hundred dollars and that he was “short” “about three thousand *364dollars.” Because of the nature of the employment involved, the state was unable to show that appellant converted any particular sum from any particular source but relied upon the above circumstantially proven case. This we hold to have been sufficiently established. The bookkeeping practice employed by the city required that his books show the receipts accurately and this they did not do. Where a trust fund is received and the execution of that trust is peculiarly within the knowledge of the trustee, the burden is cast upon him to account for the trust. Jackson v. State, 44 Tex.Cr.R. 259, 70 S.W. 760; and Busby v. State, 51 Tex.Cr.R. 289, 103 S.W. 638, and cases cited.
The failure of the court to certify that the facts, which form the basis of the objection stated in Bill of Exception No. 14 were true, together with his qualifications to such bill, leaves nothing therein for us to review. Texas Digest, Crim. Law 1092(14).
Being unable to agree with appellant’s contentions, the motion for rehearing is overruled.