Hill v. State

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

MORRISON, Judge.

Appellant takes this Court to task for failure to discuss his complaints as to the charge. Notice of appeal in this case was given on March 7, 1962. It became incumbent upon appellant, under the terms of Article 760d, V.A.C.C.P., to perfect his bills of exception within 90 days thereafter. No bills of exception relating to the court’s charge appear in the record.

On October 5, 1962, long after this case had been set for submission in this Court and long after the 90 days allowed for the preparation of bills of exception had elapsed, we were presented with a certificate from the trial court in which he stated that “The objections and exceptions of the defendant to the court’s charge in this case, and the request for the special charge may be made and put in proper form at a later date at any time within the legal requirements of the law, and the permission of the court is given.” It further recites that “It was the intention of the court at the time of the preparation of this charge for the record to reflect that every special charge requested, and every exception and objection made to the charge, were respectively overruled, except as given in the court’s main charge.”

There is no escape from the conclusion that if this Court considered the above we would in effect be permitting the court to perfect bills of exception relating to the charge for the appellant long after the time provided by statute, contrary to the holdings of this Court in Ortiz v. State, 121 Tex.Cr.R. 438, 53 S.W.2d 58; Tindol v. State, 156 Tex.Cr.R. 187, 239 S.W.2d 396; Gonzalez v. State, 164 Tex.Cr.R. 64, 297 S.W.2d 144; Crawford v. State, 165 Tex.Cr.R. 147, 305 S.W.2d 362; and Smith v. State, 166 Tex.Cr.R. 294, 313 S.W.2d 291.

Even if we did, we would not be authorized to consider these bills of exception because nowhere do we find that an exception was reserved to the action of the court in overruling the objection and in refusing the .requested charges, as is required to preserve the error by Driver v. State, 105 Tex.Cr.R. 29, 285 S.W. 312, and Sims v. State, 156 Tex.Cr.R. 608, 245 S.W.2d 260.

Appellant urges that we consider his bills of exception even though not filed in time and says that we did so on rehearing in the recent case of Roberts v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 360 S.W.2d 883. A careful reading of the opinion in that case will reveal that we declined to consider such bill and observed, in passing, that if we could it would avail the accused nothing.

Under the peculiar facts of thia case, it became necessary far the State to track the entire history of the financial dealings between appellant and the injured bank in order for the jury to know why the bank would relinquish to appellant the sum of money charged in this indictment in the manner in which the same was done and the means used by appellant in order to build up the bank’s confidence in him as a *384legitimate businessman, together with the fact that appellant’s representations made to the bank were in fact untrue.

Remaining convinced that we properly disposed of this cause originally, appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.