Court Opinion

ID: 9665815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:57:39.909296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:19.006468
License: Public Domain

ODOM, Judge
(dissenting).
The majority conclude that no limiting charge was required because the evidence of “ancillary transactions” (conversion of funds from some 275 individuals) amounted to “circumstances to prove the State’s main case.” After correctly asserting that an offense under Article 95, V.A.P.C., involves “embezzlement of funds belonging to a public body, not the taking of property from a particular individual or individuals,” the majority come to the conclusion that the “many transactions in which the appellant failed to account for funds collected” constituted evidence of “the ultimate conver*297sion of county funds to the appellant’s own use and benefit.”
If all of the funds received were converted in violation of the statute at one time, there would be only one conversion, one offense, and therefore no extraneous offense. Where, however, the funds were received at various times over a three year period, and where appellant appears to have been required to surrender funds weekly with a report of the funds collected, how can the majority say there was but one conversion? Is it the majority’s position that when an official under Article 95, supra, has established a practice of repeatedly converting public funds to his own use and benefit, until he is caught only one offense has been committed? Although it is true that each receipt of' funds is not a separate offense, each separate conversion does constitute a separate offense. The evidence of the State clearly reveals that not all of the 275 separately collected funds were converted at the same time. The separate conversions were separate offenses. The court was required to honor appellant’s request for a limiting charge on the use of the evidence of extraneous offenses.
The majority assert in the alternative that appellant himself testified to some of the “ancillary transactions.” The majority may not have it both ways. Appellant’s testimony was an attempted explanation of discrepancies in figures showing funds received, which, as pointed out by the majority, is not the characteristic which determines whether there was evidence of extraneous offenses. Appellant did not testify to extraneous conversions.
Finally the majority state that, even if error, the failure to give a limiting charge was harmless error because the jury was only called upon to resolve two issues, one of which was whether the funds belonged to individuals rather than to the county. If admissible to show intent, how does that render extraneous conversions relevant on the issue of to whom the funds belonged? Furthermore, one of the purposes of requiring a limiting instruction is to prevent the jury from using extraneous offenses to convict the accused for being a criminal generally, one of the dangers in admitting such evidence, but clearly not a proper issue in any case. Cf. Albrecht v. State, 486 S.W.2d 97 (Tex.Cr.App.1972).
I dissent from the majority’s disposition of this issue.