Halfen v. United States

• Decision Date: 09 October 1963
• Docket Number: No. 19467.,19467.
• Citation: 321 F.2d 556
• Parties: Jack Harold HALFEN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

321 F.2d 556 (1963)

Jack Harold HALFEN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 19467.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

August 8, 1963.

Rehearing Denied October 9, 1963.

John M. Anderson, Fort Worth, Tex., for appellant.

William L. Hughes, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., Fort Worth, Tex., Barefoot Sanders, U. S. Atty., for appellee.

Before TUTTLE, Chief Judge, and WISDOM and GEWIN, Circuit Judges.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a conviction for causing a forged money order to be transported in interstate commerce. The defendant, Jack Harold Halfen, alleges as error (1) the insufficiency of the evidence to connect him with the transaction in question, and (2) the admission into evidence of testimony relating to other forgeries purportedly committed by him.

In 1960 a series of money orders disappeared from the Western Union office at Superior, Nebraska. In January 1961, one of these money orders, countersigned by a fictitious person, was passed in Fort Worth, Texas, by the defendant. Using the name Robert Wilson, he purchased automobile seat covers with the money order and received cash in excess of the price of his purchase. The bank with whom the money order was deposited returned it as a forgery.

The appellant relies primarily upon the inability of Homer Snyder, a salesman for the Rayco Seat Cover Co. to identify him "positively" at the time of the trial as the man for whom he cashed the forged money order. Snyder did, however, make a tentative identification, stating that "there is a resemblance. There is no doubt about a resemblance being there, but as far as positively identifying the man from the short period of time I was in contact with him, I am reluctant to say positively." He identified also two photographs as resembling the man who had given him the money order, and there was ample evidence connecting them with Halfen. The record raises an inference that Snyder's reluctance to make a positive identification at the trial was because the defendant had dyed his hair a darker color and grown a moustache since the time of the forgery. Four other witnesses, who testified that Halfen was the same man who had passed or attempted to pass forged Western Union money orders from the same series as that lost or stolen from the Superior, Nebraska, office, all made positive identification, and all also noted that he had changed his appearance subsequently.

Evidence related to the car Halfen was driving clearly connects him with the forgery. Ralph Winton, vice president of Dumas Milner Chevrolet Co. in San Antonio, Texas, testified that Jack Halfen had purchased a 1960 two-tone, copper and beige Chevrolet station wagon prior to the time of the transaction, and Snyder stated that he had installed the seat covers for which the forged money order was given in a 1960 Chevrolet station wagon. Mrs. Paul Sawyer, office manager, and Wayne Hopkins, assistant manager of a supermarket in Texarkana, stated that Halfen had attempted to cash a money order at the store, had left hurriedly when questioned, and had driven away in two-tone Chevrolet which was brownish in color.

There was thus sufficient evidence, even without Snyder's unqualified identification, to warrant a jury's finding that the defendant was in fact the man who cashed the forged money order with the automobile...