Herndon v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas

Herndon v. State

543 S.W.2d 109, 1976 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1067

CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas

DecidedOctober 6, 1976

Docket51593

StatusPublished

Cited by38 cases

This text of 543 S.W.2d 109 (Herndon v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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Herndon v. State, 543 S.W.2d 109, 1976 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1067 (Tex. 1976).

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Opinions

OPINION

DOUGLAS, Judge.

This is an appeal from a conviction for the offense of bookmaking under Article 652a, former penal code. The court assessed punishment at three years, probated, and a fine of $1,000.00.

Appellant’s sole ground of error challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. In considering all of the evidence in a light most favorable to the verdict as this Court should do, the evidence is sufficient to uphold the verdict.

The indictment alleged that Herndon did “unlawfully take and offer to take and accept and place for a person known only to the Grand Jurors as ‘Z’, bets and wagers of money on a football game, to wit: ‘ “Z” Miami + 2⅜ 220.’ ”

Officers of the Greater Dallas Organized Crime Task Force, armed with a search warrant, went to the apartment which was surrounded by a chained and padlocked patio. After the officers crawled through an opening of about 2⅞ feet and knocked on the door, Herndon admitted them. There were two telephones on the dining room table. Deborah Cross, who was' in the apartment, had forty-four hundred dollars in her purse. This was the amount calculated from the exhibits as having been collected by appellant on the day in question. Fred Glenn, who was qualified as an expert on bookmaking operations, identified gambling paraphernalia which was found in the apartment. State’s Exhibits Nos. 3 and 4 were identified as line sheet documents on basketball games. State’s Exhibit No. 5 was identified as “ . . .a note pad listing the names of teams, the odds on the teams and the amount bet, with the individual names depicting which individual bet how much on each game”; the pad consisted of nine pages. State’s Exhibit No. 6 was another note pad containing initials, a team with.the odds and the amount bet on the team.

Detective Don Hamon of the Irving Police Department testified that he found a “settle up” sheet, identified as State’s Exhibit No. 7, in the back bedroom. Detective Hamon testified that the “settle up” sheet disclosed the names of various bettors, their winnings and losses and the amount collected or paid by the bookmaker.

Detective D. H. Pfeifer of the Grand Prairie Police Department testified that State’s Exhibit No. 8 was a “settle up” sheet and that he found it in Herndon’s pocket. Pfeifer further testified that during the search the telephones in the apartment rang often and at 6:50 p. m. an individual identifying himself as “Sammy” called and when he (Pfeifer) answered, asked, “Gene?” to which he (Pfeifer) stated, “Yeah.” The caller then said, “This is Sam; what’s the line?” When Pfeifer gave him the line, Sammy then said, “I’ll take two dollars and Miami plus two and a half,” to which he replied, “You’re on,” and then inquired of his caller if two dollars meant two hundred dollars, to which the caller replied, “Sure,” and hung up. Shortly after 6:50 p. m., a second caller who identified himself as “Jack W.” called to place a bet on two basketball games.

Detective Roy Vaughn of the Dallas City Police Department, qualified as an expert on bookmaking operations, testified that State’s Exhibits Nos. 3 and 4, previously identified as “line sheets” on basketball games, were basketball schedules transferred into line sheets for professional bookmaking. State’s Exhibit No. 5, a spiral notebook, previously identified by Officer Glenn as having been found in the apartment, was discussed in detail by Detective Vaughn during his testimony. He testified that the “particular entries on this (page 1 of the exhibit) are actually going to be bet slips or what are commonly referred to as [111]*111‘tickets’. It would be where a bookmaker would place the particular bet that an individual made, more for record keeping purposes, the amount of money wagered in the particular bet that he made, at what point he made it at.” He testified that a “juice” meant the fee a person would pay a bookmaker on a losing wager, normally ten percent, so that the “juice” on a $200.00 bet would be $20.00. In testifying as to the purpose and content of a notebook sheet stapled to the back of page three of Exhibit No. 5 he stated: “In my opinion that’s probably going to be some football bets, probably on the Super Bowl” — between Miami and Washington on January 14, 1973. The entry on that sheet, “ ‘Z’ Miami + 2½ 220”, was described as follows: “In my opinion that would be a bettor identified or coded by the name of ‘Z’ had placed a bet on Miami plus two and a half for two hundred and twenty dollars.” In response to a question from the court, Detective Vaughn replied that State’s Exhibit No. 5 had no date on it. An entry in State’s Exhibit No. 6, “C M Washington — 2 110,” was identified as a wager of some sort.

Fred Green, an accountant for the Dallas Police Department, testified that he had received training in the United States Army Signal Corps in cryptography, the science of coding and decoding messages, and that he was a certified cryptographer. He related that he had analyzed several items contained in State’s Exhibit No. 5 the appropriate page of which is set out on next page:

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