Court Opinion

ID: 6892809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 21:46:19.250834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:05:53.130701
License: Public Domain

WALLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am unwilling to attach criminal consequences to the act of notarizing a false affidavit in the absence of clear proof that the Notary counselled or procured the making of such an affidavit with knowledge of its falsity. A Notary is not required to vouch for the truth of the affidavits which he takes. He commits no crime in merely administering the oath of another even if he thinks it is false any more than does the Clerk when he swears a witness to a deposition which the Clerk might have reason to believe is false.
The affidavits were prepared by Appellant from information supplied by the mother of the three boys, and were prepared before Appellant ever saw those affiants. The fact that when they came in the next day to swear to the affidavits their ages appeared to Appellant to be greater than the ages which had been stated did not make him a felon merely because of the fact that he administered the oath to the affiants.
The Government used eighteen witnesses in convincing the jury that the ages of the Towns boys were greater than those stated in their affidavits. Nevertheless, its attorney urges that Appellant, in face of their affidavits, their mother’s statement, and the birth dates written in the ancient-looking Bible, should be deemed a criminal because he did not of his own motion adjudge that the ages stated were false, notwithstanding the fact that the law does not cast upon a Notary this responsibility.
Appellant also made three certificates as to dates of birth appearing in the family Bible, but there is nothing false on the face of those certificates. The Bible was transmitted to this Court as an original exhibit. It has every external appearance of being very old. Dates purporting to show the birthdays of the Towns children are written in it. The date of publication of the Bible is not shown, but tucked away in very fine print is a statement that a license to print it was not issued until 1939. A failure by Appellant to discover this date is thoroughly understandable. Such an oversight could easily and likely occur, and, if so, it should not be characterized as the act of a felon.
He received only $3.00 for: writing six affidavits; making his certificate for each of the three sons; advising the mother as to the requisites to obtain delayed birth certificates ; and taking the oaths of the three boys and their mother to those affidavits. This small sum is not sufficient to create the inference that his act was even venal, much less criminal.
The evidence as to the Appellant’s knowledge and intent is entirely circumstantial and signally fails, in the writer’s view, to exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than that of Appellant’s guilt. This negro may have been guilty of advising the making, and of aiding in the making, of false affidavits, but the evidence leaves too much to the imagination. His acts are as consistent with innocence as they are with guilt. The jury was never instructed that where circumstantial evidence is relied on to prove a material fact in a criminal case the circumstances must be such as to exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than the existence of the *276fact'’ sought to be proven. But since no request was made for such a charge, and no exception taken to the failure to give such a charge, I would not reverse for this reason. I cite the failure to give such a charge merely as one explanation why the jury may have brought in a verdict of guilty without sufficient support, as I see it, in the evidence. . I think the judgment should be reversed.