Woodson v. State
| Decision Date | 02 November 1887 |
| Citation | 6 S.W. 184 |
| Parties | WOODSON v. STATE. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
James Woodson was indicted in Harris county for false swearing. On change of venue, on motion of the court, to Galveston county, he was tried and convicted, and sentenced to the penitentiary for two years. Smith and Baker were opposing candidates for mayor. Baker's friends announced, one morning, that he had been shot at for refusing to withdraw in favor of Smith. Defendant made an affidavit that he was near Baker at the time of the shooting; that it was done by Baker's friends, with his connivance, for political effect. Upon this affidavit an indictment for false swearing was based. Defendant appealed.
Fisher, Stubbs, Burke & Jones, for appellant. W. L. Davidson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
With regard to the rulings of the court in changing the venue of this cause, and upon the defendant's plea to the jurisdiction, it is unnecessary that we should notice them further than to refer to the decision in Bohannon v. State, 14 Tex. App. 271, where precisely the same questions arose, and, after an elaborate discussion, were determined adversely to the positions urged by defendant's counsel in this case.
It was not error to permit the state's witness Railey to testify that he was a justice of the peace of Harris county, and, as such, administered to the defendant the oath upon which the false swearing is predicated. While the general rule is that the best evidence by which a fact can be proved must be produced, or its absence accounted for, before secondary or inferior evidence is admissible, a well-established exception to this general rule is that the official character of an alleged public officer need not be proved by the commission or other written evidence of the right of such officer to act as such, except in an issue directly between the officer and the public. Such proof may be made originally by parol evidence, and is sufficient if it shows such person to be a de facto officer. This exception to the general rule is founded upon public convenience, and is as well established as the general rule. 1 Greenl. Ev. §§ 83-92; 1 Whart. Ev. § 78; Whart. Crim. Ev. § 164; Abb. Tr. Ev. 193.
On the cross-examination of the state's witness Jemeson, the defendant asked said witness the question: "Have you not been confined in the penitentiary for crime?" Upon objection made thereto by the state, the witness was not...
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Harris v. State
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