Court Opinion

ID: 9671334
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:34:41.775039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:09.349235
License: Public Domain

MORRISON, Judge
(concurring).
It has been suggested that the offense in question was committed when the order allowing the fee was allegedly signed by the judge. This position cannot be sustained because the alleged order does not appear to have been entered in the records of the Probate Court and there is an entire absence of any testimony that it was necessary or that it was ever used to effect the withdrawal of the monies in question; therefore, we cannot base an opinion upon it. Nor can the position be maintained that the money was not appropriated until it found its way into the possession of appellant because this statute could not be violated by appellant who was not a member of a class capable of committing this crime.
While the opinion of this Court may not meet with popular approval, the writer, at least, should not be subject to criticism because I pointed out as early as 1952, in an article which appears in Volume 1 of the Penal Code, that, as I saw it, the Legislature should abolish the distinction between accomplices and principals. More than ten years have passed since such article was published, and the Legislature has not seen fit to change the law.
Holt v. State, 144 Tex.Cr.R. 62, 160 S.W.2d 944, can have no application here because the accused in that case was actively participating in the offense at the time it occurred, just as was Parnell, and neither case involved conversion of the funds of an estate as we have here and as we had in Hankamer v. State, supra.
Regardless of the charge, the fact remains that in all cases affirmed by this Court holding the accused to be a principal he was actually doing something at the time of the commission of the offense in the furtherance of its commission.
Whether or not the writer is sound in the above conclusions, three other reversible errors appear in this record, as pointed out in Judge Dice’s opinion, with which I concur entirely.