Crawford v. State

Decision Date11 June 1892
Citation19 S.W. 766
PartiesCRAWFORD v. STATE.
CourtTexas Court of Appeals

R. H. Harrison, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

SIMKINS, J.

Appellant was indicted for forgery and uttering the forged instrument, and, under the charge of the court, was found guilty of both offenses, and punished by two years in the penitentiary for forgery, and was further punished by two additional years in the penitentiary for uttering the forged instrument, and appeals to this court. The alleged forged document was as follows: "T. L. JUNELL, at Home. Mr. S. P. Mann, pay to James Wells $1 and a half, and I will pay you. I have got no change." The indictment charged that the defendant made this instrument on the 19th day of June, 1891, in Hopkins county, with intent to injure and defraud, and with the purpose of presenting it to S. P. Mann as the act of T. L. Junell, and representing that he was James Wells, the payee. The second count alleged that the defendant, on the 19th day of June, 1891, did knowingly and fraudulently pass as true to S. P. Mann the forged instrument above described, and represented that he was James Wells, the payee, and that the said instrument was the act of T. L. Junell, and it was made to enable the said James Wells to get $1.50 in said instrument mentioned. There are three questions in the case we desire to notice:

1. Defendant objected to the introduction of the instrument on the ground of variance. The original instrument is sent up in the record, but, on inspection, we cannot say the court erred in admitting it to the jury.

2. Defendant moved in arrest of judgment because the instrument alleged to have been forged is not such an instrument which, if true, would create pecuniary liability. It cannot be denied that if the name of the proposed drawer of the order, T. L. Junell, had been signed at the end instead of the beginning the instrument would have been a valid, legal order binding upon him, such as would sustain an indictment. Hendrick's Case, 26 Tex. App. 177, 9 S. W. Rep. 555, 557. Does the place where the signature of T. L. Junell appears, had he in truth given the order, make any difference, so far as his liability is concerned? The rule, as laid down by the authorities, is that if the maker intended to be bound by the order or written instrument it makes no difference where his name appears. This is settled by elementary writers, and is now the law of this state. In Fulshear v. Randon, 18 Tex. 277, it is held that, in order to bind a party to a written contract or agreement, it is not necessary that his signature should appear at the end of it. If he writes his name in any part of the agreement it may be taken as his signature, provided it is written for the purpose of giving authenticity to the instrument. Newton v. Emerson, 66 Tex. 145, 18 S. W. Rep. 348; 3 Pars. Cont. §§ 8, 344; 1 Daniel, Neg. Inst. § 74. The instrument, then, if genuine, would have created a pecuniary obligation on the part of Junell to pay S. P. Mann $1.50, in case he, Mann, paid the order; that is to say, if paid it could be the basis of a civil action for damages in case of a failure on the part of Junell to pay it in accounting between Mann and himself. It was not necessary, under the decisions of this court, that the order should be accepted or the money paid to defendant by S. P. Mann to constitute forgery. Keeler's Case, 15 Tex. App. 111; Hendrick's Case, 26 Tex. App. 177, 9 S. W. Rep. 555, 557. The court did not err in refusing to arrest the judgment on this ground.

3. Can defendant be convicted of two felonies under the same indictment, and be punished for each? The learned trial judge admits in his argument that there is no precedent for such a proceeding as the one at bar to be found in the Texas decisions, nor, indeed, can any well-considered case be found in any state except in those courts in which the judge assesses the punishment, and where he is limited in the aggregate to the highest punishment that can be given upon any one count. We have no such law in Texas. We have no desire to establish any such precedent, and certainly have no occasion to do so in a case like this, in which a paltry order for $1.50 was drawn by an ignorant negro, in his...

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31 cases
  • McIntire v. State
    • United States
    • Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
    • June 26, 1985
    ...with the complaining witness. See Drake, supra, citing Banks v. State, 93 Tex.Cr.R. 117, 246 S.W. 377 (1922) and Crawford v. State, 31 Tex.Cr.R. 51, 19 S.W. 766 (Ct.App.1892). We conclude that the allegations of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and of indecency with a child arose in the s......
  • Drake v. State
    • United States
    • Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
    • February 27, 1985
    ...Santoscoy v. State, 596 S.W.2d 896, 902 (Tex.Cr.App.1980). And by quoting from the 1892 opinion of the Court in Crawford v. State, 31 Tex.Cr.R. 51, 19 S.W. 766 (Ct.App.1892), Santoscoy suggests a revival of earlier common law pleading practice the Court had engrafted onto former article 433......
  • Hendrix v. State
    • United States
    • Texas Court of Appeals
    • November 16, 2004
    ...be done, a man could be crushed by accumulating charges, or injured by their solemn presentation to the jury. Crawford v. State, 31 Tex.Crim. 51, 19 S.W. 766, 767 (Ct.App.1892) 9. "The object in inserting various counts in an indictment is not to secure separate convictions for as many coun......
  • Cochran v. State
    • United States
    • Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
    • May 30, 1930
    ...set out contained several names, and no allegation as to which of said names was forged. The indictment was upheld. In Crawford v. State, 31 Tex. Cr. R. 51, 19 S. W. 766, appears a case in which the instrument set out in the indictment contained the alleged forged name only at the beginning......
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