Court Opinion

ID: 9776920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:48:49.139488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:29.025558
License: Public Domain

WOODLEY, Judge,
dissenting.
*426The instrument, the contents of which were shown by the state’s testimony to have been misrepresented to Louis C. Peoples, was one of thirteen applications and contracts of sale under which a tract of land in Zavala County, consisting of thirteen parcels and known as Alamo Subdivision No. 2 was purchased by the state under the Texas Veterans Land Program, a parcel with common water rights to an irrigation well for the benefit of each of the thirteen veterans. The thirteen contracts and applications bear the same date and the evidence shows that they were carried by appellant to Ledbetter, a notary public, who, at appellant’s request, falsely certified as a notary public that each of the veterans had personally appeared before him and acknowledged the execution of the instrument which bore his signature. The sale of the tract of land known as Alamo Subdivision No. 2, in Zavala County, to the state was completed upon these applications and contracts.
An essential element of the offense charged is that the false interpretation or misrepresentation be made with intent to defraud. For the purpose of proving such intent all of the evidence relating to the sale of said subdivision was admissible and was admitted, including the testimony of veterans other than the one named in the indictment as having been induced to sign the application and contract of sale therein set out, and the testimony as to the false and forged notary certificates.
The trial court limited the testimony as to these transactions as follows: “Any evidence which may have been introduced before you as to any transactions, if any, between the defendant and any other persons was admitted for the sole purpose of showing, if such evidence does show, the intent and motive of the defendant in the transaction with which he is charged in this case, and if you consider other such testimony, if any, you must limit your consideration solely for such purpose and no other purpose.”
To this charge appellant reserved the following exception because of omission: “Defendant objects and excepts to numbered paragraph 6 of the court’s charge because the court does not therein expressly instruct the jury that before they can consider ‘any transactions’ referred to therein they must first find and believe beyond a reasonable doubt that such representations or misrepresentations were in fact made by the defendant to the other persons, namely, Fredrick F. Franklin and Floyd Peoples, and that they should disregard such testimony for any purpose whatsoever if they have a reasonable doubt that such *427representations or misrepresentations were so made by the defendant to such other named persons, and that such other named persons relied thereon and that such representations were made with intent to defraud.”
It will be seen that there was no attack upon the above-quoted charge insofar as it limited the evidence showing that appellant was a party to the forgery of the notary certificates and to the uttering and passing thereof, but that a charge was sought instructing the jury in effect that they could not consider the testimony of the other veterans as to representations made to them by appellant as to the contents of the applications and contracts signed by them unless they believed beyond a reasonable doubt not only that these representations or misrepresentations were made, but that these other veterans relied theron. No such burden rested on the state.
The evidence limited in the charge was not admissible because it showed extraneous offenses but as showing that appellant procured the signatures of other veterans of the same group to their applications by the use of the same or similar misrepresentations in the same scheme to sell to the state the land composing Alamo Subdivision No. 2 in Zavala County.
It was the fact that appellant made the same or similar misrepresentations as to the contents of these instruments to others of the group, and not the fact that other veterans relied upon such misrepresentations, that was material and was relied upon by the state to show an intent to defraud the veteran named in the indictment.
I find no reversible error in the charge, nor in the trial court’s action in excusing jurors who expressed a prejudice and were thereafter challenged by the state.