People v. Dole

GAROUTTE, J. The defendant has been convicted of the crime of forgery, in raising the amount of a check from $2.50 to $850, and also forging certain indorsements thereon, with intent to defraud the State Loan and Trust Company. He is also charged with uttering the check as forged, with intent to defraud said loan and trust company.

1. The demurrer to the information was properly overruled, and likewise the objections to the admission of the check in evidence. There were some differences disclosed between the check set out in the information and the one introduced in evidence, but those differences were slight, and in no degree so substantial as to justify the rejection of the check in evidence by reason of the variance.

2. The defendant testified in his own behalf, and explained his connection with the check by stating that he won it from one Adams in a game of cards at Los Angeles city. He further testified that he was subsequently arrested in the city of San Francisco for the crime here charged. Upon cross-examination he was asked if he ever stated to the arresting officer, or to the officers of the Los Angeles jail, who held him in custody subsequent to his arrest that he obtained the check from Adams, or secured the possession of it in the manner aforesaid. To this line of cross-examination defendant objected upon the grounds that it was an invasion of his constitutional rights, and also not proper cross-examination. If the questions addressed to the defendant were proper cross-examination, then certainly no violation of his constitutional rights is shown. The lines drawn by the decisions of this court, marking the limits of the cross-examination of a defendant when he goes upon the witness-stand, are not clearly defined. Penal Code, section 1323, declares that he may be examined as to all matters about which he was examined in chief. This is substantially the rule of cross-examination as to other witnesses. In People v. Gallagher, 100 Cal. 475, 35 Pac. 80, the question here presented is carefully considered by the court; and upon a review of the California cases it is declared that any question that would have a tendency to elicit the truth from the witness as to the matters about which he has testified in chief, or anything that would explain, limit, modify or destroy the force of the evidence given in chief, is within the domain of proper cross-examination. It is there declared that by cross-examination his conduct [936]may be shown to be inconsistent with his statements made upon the witness-stand in his own behalf, and the negative answers of the witness to the questions now under consideration, to some degree certainly, indicated conduct inconsistent with the evidence he had given in his examination in chief. It might be said that the evidence of his conduct in this regard was in no sense conclusive of the fact sought to be established by it, but its weight was for the jury alone, and it cannot be said that it was absolutely valueless upon the point toward which it was directed. It is declared in the Gallagher case that, as to matters testified to by a defendant in chief, the doors are opened “for the most searching investigation, by cross-examination, as to the accuracy of his testimony, as fully as any other witness who might have given the same testimony.” Tested by this rule, the cross-examination furnished no valid ground for objection. The ease of People v. Elster, 2 Cal. Unrep. 315, 3 Pac. 884, cited to this point by appellant, is not authority, for the reason that the defendant was not a witness in his own behalf.