People v. Hansen

CRAIG, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment and an order denying defendant’s motion for a new trial. The defendant. was charged with the crime of forgery by an information containing two counts. The first count alleges that the defendant did make, utter, forge, and counterfeit a deed dated September 18, 1919, to a certain piece of land in Orange County, with intent to defraud one T. R. KZinmounth. By the second count the same charge is made except that the deed said to have been forged is dated October 15, 1919.

[106]

On the trial T. R. Kinmounth was called as a witness and testified that he was the owner of the property described in the deeds set up in the information, having received title thereto from the estate of one Murphy in 1890, and that he had paid all taxes ever since that date; that he Avas a nonresident of California and had not been in this state for more than thirty years; that he had never signed a deed of this property to Samuel Hansen and did not know the latter; that he was a married man, although both of the deeds recited the fact that he was single. It was shown that the purported deeds as set out in the information from Kinmounth to Hansen appeared to be acknowledged before a notary public named Cora E. Moore; that they were recorded in the office of the county recorder of Orange County, and this fact Avas established by the introduction of the records. It was further proved that there never had been such a notary public as C. E. Moore holding a license from the state of California for Orange County; that after said deeds were recorded the defendant conveyed the property to one McDuffie.

[1]

On behalf of the defendant several witnesses testified that a person named Kinmounth had executed deeds of the land in question to the defendant. It is claimed by appellant that the court erred in permitting proof of ownership by the county records without a foundation, and that the best and only competent evidence would have been the original deeds. To support this contention we are referred to

People

v.

Strassman, 112

Cal. 687 [45 Pac. 3]. In that ease a record title was shown in the complaining witness but there was no evidence to prove that betxveen the date thereof and the filing of the information title had not passed to someone else. The intervening period was about a year. The court there held that the presumption of the continuance of title in the person in whom it was shoAvn to exist by the record at the date of recordation must give way to the presumption of innocence. In the instant case the prosecution has not relied upon the presumption of the continuance of title in Kinmounth since the record shows that he acquired the same. Kinmounth himself testified that he had. not alienated it. This evidence was competent. (See. 1951, Code Civ. Proe.)