Payne v. State

249 S.W. 470, 93 Tex. Crim. 595, 1922 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 723
Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas·Decided November 1, 1922·No. No. 7088.·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinions

LATTIMORE, Judge.

Appellant was convicted in the District Court of Jones County of possessing intoxicating liquor for the purpose of sale, and his punishment fixed at three years in the penitentiary.

A motion was made to disqualify Hon. W. R. Chapman, the district judge who tried this case, but same was overruled and this action is made the subject of a bill of exceptions. Article 617 of our Code of Criminal Procedure contains an enumeration of those things which will disqualify a judge from sitting in any case. The grounds appearing in the motion in the instant case are not named in said statute. It was set up that the offense was alleged to have been committed upon a farm belonging to Judge Chapman and that he and his wife were present on the day of the alleged commission thereof, and that his wife was a witness in said case, and that the judge himself was cognizant of the facts. Judge Chapman did not testify in the case. As stated above, none of the statutory grounds of disqualification were made to appear. The motion was properly overruled.

The first bill-of exceptions in the record complains of a question by the State to McKennon, a witness for appellant, the question and answer being as follows:

“I will ask you if just prior to that, you and this defendant’s boy didn’t come down here and threaten Mattie Cleveland and try to make her leave and not appear before the grand jury? To which the witness was permitted to answer, over the objection of thé defendant: T was there but wasn’t there for that purpose.’ ”

The question is addressed to a matter which would be inadmissible without a showing of some connection of appellant with the mission and message of the witness, but the answer given and set out in said bill of exceptions only states the presence of the witness at Mattie Cleveland’s place, and denies the purpose and statements which if in testimony would have been hurtful and would have rendered said testimony incompetent. The witness having so answered, the bill of exceptions presents no error.

Appellant’s next bill of exceptions was refused by the court, who himself prepared and filed in lieu thereof a bill, the correctness of which is attested both by the court and the official court stenographer. *597 The' bill approved by the court sets out at length the testimony of a witness, at the conclusion of which it is stated that appellant said he objected to the testimony, to which the court replied the objection is overruled, and it is stated that appellant’s attorneys said “we except.” Appellant’s next bill of exceptions is marked refused with the statement and qualification by the trial court, which it verified by the official stenographer, that no objection of any kind was made to the testimony set out in said refused bill.

Appellant’s next three bills of exception are identical and are also marked refused by the trial court, and in lieu thereof the court below files a stenographic report of the testimony in question and answer form of the witness which is complained of, at the end of which testimony appears an objection by appellant which was sustained by the court as to the last question asked before said objection was made. There then appears a statement by appellant of an objection as follows:

“Mr. Farrow: We object also to the fact that young Payne or anyone else except the defendant himself, if they have established the fact that he did, we submit it without objection, but we have-.”

This court has often stated that attorneys may not sit quietly by and allow objectionable testimony to be introduced without stating some objection. In such case it is too late to make the objection after the testimony is before the jury. None of said three bills as same appear in the record show error. There also appears relative to said bills of exception, the affidavits of appellant’s attorneys in which it is substantially stated that they made no specific and detailed objection to the matters complained of.in said bills of exception, only stating to the court that they objected to the testimony; that the reason they took no more specific objection was that the court below had repeatedly told them that in each and every case where appellant objected to the admission of any testimony the court would allow a full bill of exceptions and would permit the affiants to incorporate in such bill of exceptions any and all objections to the admission of the testimony.

Practice such as indicated in these affidavits could seem but to lead to confusion and trouble, but in any event such action and statements of the trial court would seem to require of the accused that when the testimony was offered which was deemed undesirable, an objection should then be stated. The course pursued in each of the three bills above mentioned, as indicated by the stenographer’s notes, to the correctness of which he certifies, was that after the objectionable evidence was before the jury appellant’s counsel then said that he objected thereto. This would hardly seem to come within the broad promise of the trial court contended for by appellant’s attorneys. We observe that the only safe rule is that one which has the approval of experience and judgment and in consonance with the statute, that is. that when an objection is made to such matters as are deemed hurtful, if it is not desired to then fully state the grounds of objection, that *598 there should be made and reduced to writing or taken down by the stenographer some memorandum of the agreement between the court and counsel that the grounds of objection may thereafter be more fully stated to the particular matter. In all our courts of felony jurisdiction we now have official court stenographers who should make stenographic record of'each question asked, each objection made, and each ruling of the trial court or agreement relative thereto, and it appears to us that there could be little room for dispute as to just what was said and done in any given case.

As we understand the record before us the objections made were not made until after the matter objected to was before the jury, and also that when the bills of exception referring to same were presented to the trial court, it appearing therefrom that all these matters were objected to properly and the objections overruled, the trial court declined to approve said bills of exception. It is stated in the affidavits of one of appellant’s counsel that the court told him that he wanted to examine the stenographic notes before taking action on said bills, and that if he could not approve them in the form in which they were presented to' him, he would simply mark them refused and would prepare bills of exception and have same filed in this cause. This course seems from the record to have been followed by the trial judge. Each of the three original bills are in the record marked refused and are accompanied by bills in lieu thereof prepared by the trial court, the correctness of which latter are certified to by the official stenographer as reflecting the facts as they actually took place.

We have expressed our views in other cases of the refusal of the trial courts to permit the taking of bills of exception at the time the matter objected to took place, but the instant case does not seem to us to fall fairly within that criticism.

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Payne v. State, 249 S.W. 470, 93 Tex. Crim. 595, 1922 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 723 (Tex. 1922).

249 S.W. 470 (Payne v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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