Keith Elvis Ward v. United States

Fifth Circuit

Keith Elvis Ward v. United States

356 F.2d 938

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

DecidedFebruary 11, 1966

Docket22623

StatusPublished

Cited by1 cases

This text of 356 F.2d 938 (Keith Elvis Ward v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook

Keith Elvis Ward v. United States, 356 F.2d 938 (5th Cir. 1966).

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Opinion

PER CURIAM:

The appellant seeks a reversal of a two count conviction for embezzling funds of a national bank for alleged insufficiency of the evidence and improper argument by government counsel.

The question of the sufficiency of the evidence turns upon the competency of the summary testimony of the head bookkeeper of the bank tracing the misappropriated funds to the appellant’s checking account in the bank. The appellant claims that such testimony was secondary evidence and therefore incompetent. We are of the opinion that the records produced in court during the trial, taken with those furnished counsel for the appellant, satisfied the requirement that the records on which summary testimony of a bookkeeper is based must be made available to the accused. No objection was ever made during the trial to the adequacy of the records so made available, to the sufficiency of time to examine them, or to the admissibility of the summary testimony. There is no merit in this contention by the appellant. Jones on Evidence, 5th Ed. #234, p. 452; Barrick v. Pratt, 5 Cir., 32 F.2d 732 (1929); Greenhill v. United States, 5 Cir., 298 F.2d 405 (1962).

We do not put the same construction as the appellant does on the challenged argument by the prosecutor. When the argument is taken to mean what we think it clearly does, it was based on a legitimate inference from the evidence.

The judgment is affirmed.

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PER CURIAM:

The appellant seeks a reversal of a two count conviction for embezzling funds of a national bank for alleged insufficiency of the evidence and improper argument by government counsel.

The question of the sufficiency of the evidence turns upon the competency of the summary testimony of the head bookkeeper of the bank tracing the misappropriated funds to the appellant’s checking account in the bank. The appellant claims that such testimony was secondary evidence and therefore incompetent. We are of the opinion that the records produced in court during the trial, taken with those furnished counsel for the appellant, satisfied the requirement that the records on which summary testimony of a bookkeeper is based must be made available to the accused. No objection was ever made during the trial to the adequacy of the records so made available, to the sufficiency of time to examine them, or to the admissibility of the summary testimony. There is no merit in this contention by the appellant. Jones on Evidence, 5th Ed. #234, p. 452; Barrick v. Pratt, 5 Cir., 32 F.2d 732 (1929); Greenhill v. United States, 5 Cir., 298 F.2d 405 (1962).

We do not put the same construction as the appellant does on the challenged argument by the prosecutor. When the argument is taken to mean what we think it clearly does, it was based on a legitimate inference from the evidence.

The judgment is affirmed.

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356 F.2d 938, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/keith-elvis-ward-v-united-states-ca5-1966.

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