Pierce v. State, 44789
| Decision Date | 08 July 1968 |
| Docket Number | No. 44789,44789 |
| Citation | 213 So.2d 769 |
| Parties | F. C. PIERCE v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
W. E. Gore, Jr., Jackson, T. N. Gore, Sr., Marks, for appellant.
Joe T. Patterson, Atty. Gen., by G. Garland Lyell, Jr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
The appellant, F. C. Pierce, was indicted for and convicted of the crime of uttering and publishing a false and forged check for $200 in the Circuit Court of the Second Judicial District of Bolivar County. He was sentenced to serve three years in the State Penitentiary.
The appellant has assigned five errors which he contends should result in a reversal of his conviction.
One of the errors assigned is that the State of Mississippi failed to prove that that Bank of Lambert is a corporation. There is no merit in this contention. The indictment sets out that "C. H. Moore, Marie Moore, The Bank of Lambert, a corporation, and J. B. Lollar, doing business as Lollar Elevator Company," were the parties injured and defrauded. The proof showed that Marie Moore and C. H. Moore were the actual parties defrauded. Inasmuch as these two actual persons were specifically identified by name as the parties defrauded and inasmuch as the offense was thus specifically and sufficiently identified so that the appellant is protected against another prosecution for the same offense, it was not error to offer no proof the the Bank of Lambert was a corporation.
Criddle v. State, 250 Miss. 328, 165 So.2d 339 (1964), is clearly distinguishable from the present case. In Criddle both parties defrauded were alleged to be corporations, but the State failed to prove the identity or existence of either of the two artificial parties. The failure to identify either of the only two parties named was fatal in Criddle, but in the present case, two of the four parties specifically named were identified with certainty as individual persons and as the actual parties defrauded.
The second and third assignments of error were:
The general rule seems to be that evidence of other criminal acts of the accused, including other forgeries, is admissible if committed at or about the same time as the offense charged, at least for the purpose of showing the accused's intent, guilty knowledge, identity and motive, and a general scheme or course of conduct. See 22A C.J.S. Criminal Law § 691(12) at 834-846 (1961).
Charles Leverett identified Exhibit No. 4 as a check given him by F. C. Pierce and chashed by Leverett in the Otasco Store in Clarksdale a few days before Christmas, 1966. Leverett bought two watches and gave the balance of the $175.00 check to Pierce. This incident was very close in point of time to the offense charged against the accused. The court correctly allowed Leverett to identify this check and the district attorney to introduce it into evidence.
The district attorney had a right to cross-examine the appellant when he took the stand as to whether or not he had passed similar checks recently in other counties of the state and in adjoining states.
On the trial, no objections were interposed by counsel for the appellant to this portion of the cross-examination.
The most serious assignment of error is that the trial court erred in granting Instruction Number 1 for the State. This was the only instruction that the State requested, and is a rather comprehensive instruction on the elements of the offense of uttering and publishing a forged instruction. Between the phrase, "he, the said F. C. Pierce, then and there well knowing," and the phrase "the...
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