Court Opinion

ID: 9770855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:23:25.992284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:21.380873
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
MORRISON, Judge.
Appellant has presented this court with a most comprehensive and all embracing brief on motion for rehearing. The theme thereof seems to be set by the following two contentions contained therein:
(1) “The complaint we are urging to the charge on the question of co-conspiracy was a substantive defensive issue and the law of principals has nothing to do with it.”
(2) “In this case the State was attempting to show that the defendant was a principal by the introduction of hearsay testimony.”
With this contention we cannot agree in this case.
*558The state showed that a felony gambling transaction took place and that appellant was, by his own acts and declarations, not those of his co-principals, shown to have been sufficiently connected with the commission of the felony to authorize a jury to convict him. Not a word uttered by them nor an act done by them connected appellant with the commission of the felony. It was his own acts which did so. In view of this analysis of the facts, we hold that the charge on acts and declarations of co-conspirators was not required and was, therefore, favorable to accused and not error.
We predicate our holding in this case on the proposition that appellant was present, and that term has been defined by this court, during the entire transaction mid therefore the question of acts and declarations of Ms co-principals in Ms absence passes out of the case.
This court is reluctant to pass over without full discussion any complaint raised by appellant’s able counsel, but we are not impressed with his claim of injury by what he alleges to have been a comment by the district attorney on appellant’s failure to testify. At most it was a bare allusion which would not warrant a reversal.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.