66 Miss. 14 | Miss. | 1888
delivered the opinion of the court.
The indictment sufficiently charged the offense of forgery. It is not necessary, except under peculiar and exceptional circumstances, to aver the existence of the debt, the discharge of which the instrument forged is intended to represent. Bishop, Directions and Forms, § 472, and note. On the facts developed on the trial, the court should have directed the jury to acquit the defendant. It was proved by the state that the taxes due by Mrs, Byrd and by G. H. Lann for the year 1886 had been fully paid and discharged before the alteration of the instrument by the defendant. It was impossible, therefore, that either the state or the county of Monroe could have been defrauded by the instruments as altered or uttered by the defendant. According to the testimony of the witness Lann, he had requested the defendant to pay the taxes due by himself and by Mrs. Byrd for the year 1887, and to guide him in so doing delivered to him certain tax receipts for the taxes of the year 1886. The defendant thereafter delivered to him the two instruments alleged to have been forged, one being the tax receipt of Mrs. Byrd, which Lann had handed to him, on which the date of the receipt had been changed from December, 1886, to December, 1887, and the other being probably an old tax receipt of Cox’s for the year 1886 in which the name of Lann had been written. But on the face of both receipts it appeared that they were given for the taxes of the year
The judgment is reversed and cause remanded.