People v. Sands

49 P.R. 15
CourtSupreme Court of Puerto Rico
DecidedNovember 6, 1935
DocketNo. 5665
StatusPublished

This text of 49 P.R. 15 (People v. Sands) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Sands, 49 P.R. 15 (prsupreme 1935).

Opinion

Me. Justice Hutchison

delivered the opinion of the court.

Sands was convicted of embezzlement and says that the district court erred in overruling a motion for a new trial.

The first ground of the motion was that the district court had erred in permitting a certain witness, who was not a certified public accountant, to testify as an expert. When the objection was made at the trial, counsel for defendant were unable to produce the law invoked by them. When the district judge proposed a recess, defendant withdrew the ob[17]*17jection. When the district attorney continued his examination of the witness, with a view to qualify him as an expert accountant, counsel for defendant protested that this was unnecessary as the objection had been withdrawn. Some quibbling ensued as to the nature and extent of the admission which counsel for defendant was willing to make and after some further examination of the witness, he was permitted to testify. Counsel for defendant then excepted to the ruling of the court on the ground that the witness had not produced any license to practice as a certified public accountant in Puerto Rico and had admitted on the stand that he was not a certified public accountant.

Aside from any question of waiver, the preliminary investigation established the fact that the witness was qualified to testify as an expert accountant. We can not agree with counsel for appellant that the subsequent testimony of this witness indicated that he was not so qualified.

Another ground of the motion was that the verdict was contrary to the evidence adduced by the prosecution. The explanation of this ground as given in the motion follows :

“ . . . This contention rests on the examination of witness Juan G. Garcia, head of the accounting department of complainant Central Aguirre Sugar Company. It was incumbent on said witness to countersign all cheeks made out by the cashier, C. D. Sands, defendant herein. This witness testified that on November 2, 1932, the defendant, in his capacity as cashier of the central, made out the said check for $28,050, and although an error was committed in the entry of the cheek in the cash book by writing the sum of $18,050 instead of $28,050, the said witness while testifying at the trial admitted that the pay roll of the central for that week, the last of the month, amounted approximately to $28,050, and that the said pay roll was fully paid from the said check for $28,050. This shows the innocence of the defendant in the present ease since he did not profit personally in the least nor was the complainant central prejudiced at all by the said bookkeeping error made by the defendant in the cash book of the central.”

[18]*18To this appellant in his brief adds the following:

“In the present case there is not the smallest bit of evidence, either direct or circumstantial, tending to show that defendant C. D. Sands appropriated to himself any money belonging to Central Aguirre Sugar Company for his own benefit, or that any money was found on his person or in his home, or that he had deposited money in any bank on current account, or that he had invested money in any mortgage or loan, or had made remittances to the United States or elsewhere. It is surprising that on September 22, 1934, the cash book should have been balanced without showing any mistake or error in the trial balance and that exactly two months afterwards, that is, after the election, a new balance should have been struck at the request of defendant Sands with the result then, not that there was any shortage in the cash, or that any evidence had been discovered to the effect that defendant Sands had appropriated to himself any money and deposited the same in any bank, or invested it in any mortgage or loan, or sent it abroad, or spent it extravagantly having a good time, reveling, or with women, or in gambling, but simply that receipts amounting to $28,050 had been reduced to $18,050, and that disbursements amounting to seven thousand odd dollars had been increased to eleven thousand odd dollars, which, far from leading to the conclusion that the cash was short, should have led to the conclusion that there was a surplus, unless there had happened what did happen, a bookkeeping error in the entry in the cash book of the item of $28,050, but a correct cash balance, because, according to the testimony of Edwards and of Garcia, the head of the office, the $28,050 of the check on the National City Bank, which was cashed for the pay roll of the Central Aguirre Sugar Co. for one week amounting to $28,050, was fully paid.
“So that the whole structure of the alleged embezzlement was merely, according to the testimony of the complainants, a bookkeeping error which did not in the least prejudice the Central Aguirre Sugar Co. and did not deprive it of any sum which legitimately should have appeared as really cash in hand.”

We shall not attempt a rehearsal of all the testimony for the prosecution. Garcia, himself a certified public accountant, not only went over the whole ground covered by Edwards, the expert acpountanf referred to in the fjrst assignment, but also testified to many things not mentioned at all [19]*19in the brief for appellant. It will suffice to say that from his testimony and from the testimony of other witnesses it appears: that at abont half past seven in the morning of November 22, 1932, Sands, cashier of the Central Aguirre Sugar Company, Inc., called G-arcia into the cashier’s office and showed him on the floor of the vault where the books were kept a cash book from which the pages for the month of November had been torn out, whereupon Sands and Garcia gathered up from the floor a lot of torn papers which had been scattered about and took them, with the mutilated cash book, into the office of the manager who had not yet arrived and with whom they then communicated by telephone; that later the vice-president of the corporation, the manager thereof and Garcia recovered from a garbage dump on the beach other fragments of papers and Edwards, who had been summoned from San Juan, with the assistance of García succeeded, within the next few days, in piecing together the pages which had been torn out; that Sands, who had been informed of the recovery of the missing fragments from the garbage heap, on the morning of November 25, cabled to a member of his family in St. Petersburg, Florida, as follows: “Send me cable saying come immediately, urgent”; that on the afternoon of the same day he received in reply this message: “Come immediately, urgent”; that he exhibited this communication to Garcia and to the manager of the Central indicating that it would be necessary for him to catch the next airplane for Miami; that this suggestion did not meet with the approval of those to whom it was submitted and he abandoned the idea of flying to Florida, that Sands was the only person who had a key to the inner door of the vault; that when confronted with the restored pages of the cash book he accepted the existence of a shortage and responsibility therefor; that he met a suggestion that it looked bad for him with an admission that this was so; that when asked if he was disposed to make good the loss .he replied that if given 15 days within which to communicate with a brother [20]*20in California, lie believed be conld make it good; and that twelve or thirteen months later an insurance company, after a careful investigation, reimbursed the Central Aguirre Sugar Company to the amount of $10,000 in accordance with the terms of its bond.

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Bluebook (online)
49 P.R. 15, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-sands-prsupreme-1935.