State v. Clinton Webb

• Decision Date: 19 May 1925
• Docket Number: (No. 5359)
• Parties: State v. Clinton Webb
• Court: West Virginia Supreme Court

99 W.Va. 225

State

v.Clinton Webb

(No. 5359)

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Submitted May 12, 1925.

Decided May 19, 1925.

Witnesses Eliciting Fact on Cross Examination of Accused, Over Objection and Exception,. That He Had Previously Served Sentence for Crime, Which Had No Connection with One in Question, Was Error.

In a trial for forgery where the accused is examined as a witness on his own behalf, it is error upon cross examination by the prosecuting attorney to elicit the fact, over his objection and exception, that he had been previously convicted of a crime and served a sentence in the penitentiary, for the purpose of impeaching his testimony, which crime had no semblance to or connection with the crime for which he was being tried.

(Witnesses, 40 Cyc. p. 2624).

Note: Parenthetical references by Editors, C. J.-Cyc. Not part of syllabi.

Error to Circuit Court, Randolph County. Clinton Webb was convicted of forgery, and he brings error.

Judgment reversed; verdict set aside; new trial awarded.

W. B. & E. L. Maxwell, for plaintiff in error. Howard B. Lee, Attorney General and It. A. Blessing, Assistant Attorney General, for the State.

Lively, President:

Defendant was convicted of forgery and given an indeterminate sentence of from two to ten years in the penitentiary, and from this sentence he prosecutes this writ of error, alleging: (1) that the verdict was contrary to the law and evidence; and (2) that he was prejudiced by the introduction of improper testimony.

Defendant purchased from the Smith Motor Sales Company an automobile tire, an inner-tube and some gas, to pay for which he delivered to it a check for $32.00 signed by J. B. Webb and made payable to the order of defendant, Clinton Webb, on the Elkins National Bank, dated July 31, 1924. The check was presented to the bank and payment denied because of insufficient funds to the credit of J. B. Webb, and on the ground that the signature of the drawer was not genuine. Smith, the manager of the Sales Company, took the check, a day or so afterwards, to the purported drawer, J. B. Webb, the father of defendant, for the purpose of having the check paid. Webb, according to his testimony, denied that the signature was his, and also denied that he had given authority to defendant to sign his name to the check. He refused to pay it. Defendant was then arrested, and within a short time thereafter, J. B. Webb, the father of defendant, paid the check. Defendant swore that he had authority from his father to sign his father's name to checks for small amounts; and the father testified that he had given such authority to the boy and that he had paid several checks theretofore issued by the boy to which his name was signed as drawer. He denied that he told Smith that he had not given authority to the boy to sign his name to checks for small amounts which the boy might need. He said that he did tell Smith that he did not give authority to sign that particular check. His explanation of his refusal to pay the check when demand was made upon him for payment was that Smith had threatened to arrest the boy, and he, thinking that he had twenty days in which to pay the check before arrest could be made, concluded that he would let Mr. Smith wait, and for the further reason that Smith had owed him for work done and was not prompt in payment. The State introduced a letter written by defendant to his father while in jail, asking his father to bail him out, and which letter made no indication that the check had been signed by the boy under authority given by his father. Whether the boy had authority from his father as testified to by both, or whether it was a subterfuge to obtain acquittal after arrest, was a question of fact which was within the province of the jury to determine; and we cannot say that the verdict was contrary to the evidence. The weight to be given to the evidence of the witnesses and their credibility for the establishment of any fact, is peculiarly within the province of the jury.

The second assignment of error is based upon the fact that while defendant was being examined as a witness on his own behalf the prosecuting attorney asked him if he had not just been released from the penitentiary a short time before he negotiated the check, and defendant's answer was that he "had been released from the pen over a year before he came home," which question and answer were objected to, but the court refused to strike them out, on the ground that it was competent evidence as affecting the credibility of the witness. Upon redirect examination defendant's counsel questioned him as to the cause of his confinement in the penitentiary and he replied that it was for breaking jail while he was being confined on a charge of complicity in breaking into a drug store, of which latter offense he was acquitted; but that he was sent to the penitentiary for breaking jail. The prosecuting attorney then asked him, in effect, if at the time he broke jail the jailer had been assaulted, and defendant stated that the jailer was not assaulted but that they had locked him up in a cell when they left. The prosecuting attorney asked him how long he had been confined in the penitentiary, and his reply was, six years, six months and ten days. It will be observed that the offense...