Court Opinion

ID: 9642043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:46:46.876466+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:42.486581
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
Writing the panel opinion on original submission in Minix v. State, 579 S.W.2d 466 (Tex.Cr.App.1979), I equated in meaning, tenor and effect the terms “without lawful authority” and “who did not authorize that act,” and understood the Court on rehearing did also.1 In my view, either phrase necessarily contemplates and embraces the fact that the unauthorized act purports to be that of another,2 but the majority relies on Minix, supra, so I am obliged to concur.3 Before the court en banc.

. For the Court En Banc, Judge Odom found, “The element of forgery under Article 979, V.A. P.C. (1925) of ‘without lawful authority’ has been brought forward in V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Sec. 32.21(a)(l)(A)(i), which requires that the purported maker ‘did not authorize the act’ of making the writing.” Minix, supra, at 467.

. That the term “without authority” alleged in the instant indictment does not utilize the qualifier “lawful” is of no moment. One who is acting without permission or is exercising power not delegated to him as agent for another, Black’s Law Dictionary (Revised Fourth Edition) 168, is surely “without authority”-lawful or otherwise-in purporting to act for another.

. As to the “purport” element, since the Court rejected the broader proposition I advanced in ultimately dissenting in Minix« supra, at 468-471, and also in Landry v. State, 583 S.W.2d 620, 627 (Tex.Cr.App.1979) — “If we would but recognize that ‘intent to defraud’ is the essence of every forgery offense and then interpret and construe the phrase according to its obvious intendment, the judgment of conviction in this, as well as what must be scores of other similar cases, would be quite legitimately upheld.”with the greatest reluctance I am bound to defer to the collective judgment of the en banc majority.