People v. Bullock

TAPPAAN, J.,

pro tem.

The defendant was tried upon four counts of issuing checks without sufficient funds and two counts of forgery. The jury’s verdict was guilty upon all six counts. This appeal is from the judgment on the verdicts and from the order of the court denying defendant’s motion for a new trial.

The evidence discloses that the defendant made use of the same general plan in all the transactions involved in the charges made against him. In each instance the defendant opened a checking account with a bank by depositing with the bank a check drawn by him upon a bank that was without the state of California. Some of these checks so deposited purported to be certified by the bank upon which they were drawn. In some cases of the accounts so opened by the defendant, he returned and attempted to draw against the account. In one instance he did withdraw funds from such an account. In all the deposits so opened by defendant, the checks with which the accounts were opened were in due course of business returned unpaid and duly protested. The accounts in the several banks so opened by defendant, no two in the same institution, were opened in different nameá and different addresses were given. The prosecution introduced testimony that the checks and other instruments alleged to have been written by defendant were all written by the same person. The defendant produced a fellow resident of the county jail, who testified that they were not written by the same person. The question of the verity of this expert testimony is one of fact for the jury.

[302]

Prom an examination of the record here, there is found ample evidence to support all of the verdicts rendered as against defendant, and to this evidence defendant presents objection only to that phase of the evidence involving the question as to the faet'that the various cheeks " presented by defendant were fictitious and drawn against nonexistent funds. The prosecution in all instances, to support this necessary element of the charges,^introduced in evidence “Protests” of the several instruments/^This method ■of proof of this fact in actions of a civil nature has been sanctioned from time immemorial. It is recognized in such cases by both common-law and statutory