Court Opinion

ID: 9773483
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:47:26.010281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:54.239502
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
MORRISON, Judge.
*289Appellant complains that we treated too lightly two of the contentions which he presented on original submission.
He contends that his voir dire examination of the prosecutrix touching her competency as a witness was unduly curtailed in that he was not permitted to elicit from her her answers to the following questions:
1 Do you know who would punish you, and
2. Will you say how you could be punished?
The witness had testified, in answer to questions propounded by the district attorney, that she was there (in court) to tell the truth and that she could be punished if she did not tell the truth. In addition to this, she was questioned by the court and answered that she understood that she was to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that she proposed to do so. Thereupon, the trial court observed that the witness appeared to be an intelligent nine-year-old girl and that she was qualified as a witness and did not require her to answer the two questions set forth above.
In Gonzales v. State, 113 Texas Cr. Rep. 439, 22 S.W. 2d 674, we reversed a conviction because of the refusal of the trial court to permit the daughter of the accused to testify. She had testified that she would be punished if she told a story, but said she did not know who would punish her, or how she would be punished.
In White v. State, 93 Texas Cr. Rep. 532, 243 S.W. 690, we held the trial court did not abuse his discretion by permitting a child to testify who stated that he did not know what would be done to him if he told a lie but that he would be punished.
We have before us the entire testimony of the child. From this we can determine whether her testimony is logical and probably true.
We think that a proper rule may be found in Branch’s Annotated Penal Code, section 1771, page 995, wherein it is said:
“The fact that a child’s testimony is intelligently given and that it believes that it is wrong to lie seems to commend its competency more than its knowledge of an obligation of an oath or its idea of where liars go now or hereafter.”
*290We have again re-examined the testimony of the prosecutrix and have concluded that she gave a plausible account of the events upon which this prosecution is based.
Appellant again urges that we hold the testimony of the prosecutrix’s mother inadmissible as hearsay. We did not pass upon the admissibility of such testimony standing alone. What we did say was that since the appellant permitted testimony about such conversation to get in the record without objection he could not predicate error upon the subsequent receipt of other evidence about the conversation. To recapitulate: When the prosecutrix was on the stand she was questioned by the state about the telephone call to her mother in which she recounted the conversation between them. No objection was interposed at this juncture. Later, on cross-examination by appellant’s counsel, prosecutrix was questioned about the conversation.
Still later, when prosecutrix’s mother was called as a witness, the appellant objected for the first time about what the child told her on the telephone.
We further observe that nothing incriminating against the accused was mentioned over the telephone.
Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this cause originally, the appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled. No second motion for rehearing will be entertained.