Court Opinion

ID: 9777102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:57:41.931221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:48.688191
License: Public Domain

WOODLEY, Judge,
dissenting.
The conviction is ordered reversed because a state’s witness, who had testified that the reputation of appellant’s witnesses Bobbitt and Harris for truth and veracity was bad, was permitted to express the opinion that the testimony under oath of neither was worthy of belief. I am unable to agree.
The rule cited by the majority requires the reputation witness to speak from general reputation and not from his own private opinion.
The proper form in inquiry, it appears, would have been to inquire of the witness who had testified that the general reputation of the defense witnesses was bad for truth, whether that general reputation was such as to entitle them to belief on oath, or whether from his knowledge of such bad reputation he believed the witnesses worthy of belief under oath.
The objection was that the question was improper; that a sufficient predicate had not been laid; that the reputation of the defense witnesses had not been put in issue, and that the state’s witness was not qualified “to give that opinion at this time.”
That appellant was not complaining because the witness was being asked for his own appraisal of the veracity of the defense witnesses is made clear by the objection.
Assuming that the question was not properly framed and the trial court erred in overruling the objection, the error is not such as to warrant reversal. Mathis v. State, 97 Texas Cr. Rep. 222, 260 S.W. 603; Clemens v. State, 81 Texas Cr. Rep. 112, 193 S.W. 1006; 45 Texas Jur. 141, 142.