Court Opinion

ID: 9681791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:56:35.802804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:35.898488
License: Public Domain

DOUGLAS, Judge
(dissenting).
I join with Judge Morrison that this conviction should not be reversed because of the refusal to instruct the jurors to acquit if they believed the appellant thought he was telling the truth at the first trial. The court instructed the jury on testimony given because of inadvertance or mistake. The gist of appellant’s testimony in the present case was in effect that he did not understand the questions at the first trial.
During the trial of the present case, the witness testified that at the first trial he was afraid and nervous because it was the first time he had been in court. He testified at the first trial that he had never had the gun in his hand until after the shots were fired. In the present trial he testified that the gun was not in his hand but it was in a package and, in substance, that was the reason he answered the question the way he did and that he believed he was telling the truth because he answered everything like they asked him. And to the question and answer that he had never seen the gun before, he thought the question meant had he seen it before in the store where the shooting occurred, but that he had actually seen the gun when he bought it.
The court instructed the jury that a statement made through inadvertence or under agitation or mistake was not perjury. His defense was sufficiently submitted in the court’s charge. Article 36.19, Vernon’s Ann.C.C.P., provides, in part, that where the requirements of Articles 36.14, 36.15 and 36.16, V.A.C.C.P., relating to the court’s charge “ . . . [t]he judgment shall not be reversed unless the error appearing from the record was calculated to injure the rights of defendant, or unless it appears from the record that the defendant has not had a fair and impartial trial. . ” Under this statute, the error, if any, would be harmless.
For the above reasons, the conviction should not be reversed.