People v. Maxwell (1897) · DecisionDepot

People v. Maxwell

Name: California Superior Court Tentative Rulings
Creator: DecisionDepot
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

California Supreme Court Sep 4, 1897 No. Crim. No. 213Published

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Holding. The court held that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a perjury conviction because the prosecution failed to meet the statutory requirement of providing either the testimony of two witnesses or one witness with corroborating circumstances.

Issues

Whether the perjury charge was defective for alleging ownership of a note at the time of filing rather than at the time of the oath.
Whether the evidence presented was sufficient to satisfy the statutory requirement for corroboration in perjury cases.

Disposition. reversed and remanded

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“The evidence is all in its nature circumstantial.”

“Of positive testimony there is none, nor is there any documentary or written evidence by which its place may be supplied.”

“The evidence in this regard being wholly insufficient, for this reason the judgment and order are reversed and the cause remanded.”

Synopsis

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Napa County and from an order refusing a new trial. E. D. Ham, Judge.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

THE COURT. Defendant, convicted of the crime of perjury, appeals from the judgment, from the order denying his motion in arrest of judgment, and from the order denying his motion for a new trial.

The perjury charged was a false oath made by defendant as to matters contained in his petition and schedules in insolvency.

It is first insisted that the information is defective and fails to charge the crime in this, that it is alleged that at the time defendant filed his petition and schedules in insolvency he was the owner of a note referred to in the information and alleged to have been omitted from the schedules, but no charge is made that at the time defendant took the oath he was the owner of the note, and it is insisted that the falsity of the oath must be determined by the state of facts existing at the time the oath was taken, and not at the time when the petition was filed. The petition and schedules bear date May 30, 1895, and were filed in the superior court of Napa county upon that date. Appellant’s contention is completely disposed of by the provisions of section 134 of the Penal Code: “The making of a deposition or certificate is deemed to be complete, within the provisions of this chapter, from the time when it is delivered by the accused to any other person, with the intent that it be uttered or published as true.” In this case the offense was completed when at the instance of defendant the papers were filed in the court. (See People v. Robles, 117 Cal. 681.)

It is further insisted upon the part of appellant that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict and judgment; that the conviction was had upon circumstantial evidence alone, and that there was an absence of the positive testimony of two witnesses, or of one witness and corroborating circumstances, required by the law before conviction in such a case as this can be had. (Code Civ. Proc., sec. 1968; People v. Wells, 103 Cal. 631; People v. Porter, 104 Cal. 415.)

The evidence upon the part of the people showed that some months prior to the date of filing the petition defendant was the [52]owner of a promissory note for sixteen hundred dollars made to him by George W. Reid, Archie McKenzie and George S. McKenzie. Three or four hundred dollars had been paid upon the note before the petition was filed. This note was not included by the insolvent amongst his assets; and it became incumbent upon the prosecution to show that at the date of the filing of the petition and schedules in insolvency the defendant was in fact the owner thereof.

Related research

Section 1968 of our Code of Civil Procedure, requiring as indispensable evidence to a conviction of perjury the testimony of two witnesses or of one witness and corroborating circumstances, is a statutory enactment of the rule which prevailed at common law. It may be argued with much force that in adopting this rule it Avas adopted in the light of the decisions of tbe common-law courts in interpretation of it. From the eminence of the tribunal which has declared it, one of those decisions entitled to the utmost respect is that of the supreme court of the United States in United States v. Wood, 14 Pet. 430. That decision Avas handed down in 1840, and the contention that the rule of common laAv enacted in our code is to be interpreted by its light is entitled to much weight. The defendant was there indicted under the revenue collection laws for the crime of perjury, alleged to have been committed in falsely swearing to the purchase price of certain goods imported by him. There was an absence of the testimony of living witnesses to the offense. Its place was supplied by the books of defendant and by his letters and cor-[54]respondenee with bis father, an English merchant, from whom the purchases were made. By these it was made to appear that he had entered into a conspiracy with his father to defraud the government of the United States by false invoices and returns, and that the price in fact paid by him for the goods was much greater than that to which he had sworn. After elaborate consideration of the question, the court thus sums up the matter: “In what case, then, will the rule not apply? Or in what cases may a living witness to the corpus delicti of a defendant be dispensed with, and documentary or written testimony be relied upon to convict? We answer, to all such where a person is charged with a perjury, directly disproved by documentary or written testimony springing from himself, with circumstances showing the corrupt intent. In cases where the perjury charged is contradicted by a public record, proved to have been well known to the defendant when he took the oath; the oath only being proved to have been taken. In eases where a party is charged with taking an oath contrary to what he must necessarily have known to be the truth, and the false swearing can be proved by his own letters relating to the fact sworn to, or by other written testimony existing and being found in the possession of a defendant, and which has been treated by him as containing the evidence of the (faet recited in it.”

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