Court Opinion

ID: 9771470
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:44:36.293532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:31.831187
License: Public Domain

DAVIDSON, Judge,
(dissenting).
It occurs to me that in endeavoring to justify the affirmance of this case my brethren have but confounded the issues and compounded their error. They now justify the affirmance of this conviction by saying that:
“It was the act of making this entry that took money from the insurance company and placed it in the investment company where it was used to pay off the notes that made the embezzlement here charged possible.”
So there now appears to be an admission that the funds, if any, used to pay off appellant’s notes belonged to and were in *54the possession of the investment company, and in no event were such funds the property of the insurance company or in its possession at the time.
The book entries took no cash from the insurance company. The cash account of that company was not disturbed. The company had just as much money immediately after the transaction as it had immediately before.
All the insurance company had or was entitled to was an account receivable from the investment company.
This was not money. No checks were drawn on or paid by the insurance company. All the entry represented was a bookkeeping transaction, with a simultaneous reduction of a paper asset and a paper liability by the equivalent amount.
The state charged this man with embezzling money. It is for that offense that he has been convicted. It is for embezzling money of the insurance company that he goes to the penitentiary.
The evidence does not show or warrant his conviction for that offense.
Mere bookkeeping entries are not money.
I dissent.