114 Mo. 626 | Mo. | 1893
Defendant was convicted at the September term, 1891, of the criminal court of Jackson county |of forgery in the first degree, and his punishment fixed at ten years imprisonment in the penitentiary.
The indictment is as follows:
In the Criminal Court of' Jackson County, Missouri, at Kansas City, Missouri,. January Term, A. D. 1891.
' “The grand jurors for the state of Missouri, in and for the body of the county of Jackson, upon their oaths, present that Frank S. Rowlen, late of the county aforesaid, on the twenty-second day of April, 1889, at.
Defendant filed a motion to quash the indictment, because it does not state facts sufficient to notify defendant of the charge against him, which was overruled. After the state had closed its case defendant interposed a demurrer to the evidence which was also overruled. After conviction defendant filed his motion for a new trial and in arrest, which being overruled, he appeals to this court.
I. The indictment is sufficient; it charges the offense in the language of the statute, and sets forth the instrument forged according to its purport, and there was no necessity for alleging that there was any intent on the part of the defendant to defraud any particular person. Revised Statutes, 1889, sec. 3626; State v. Rucker, 93 Mo. 89; State v. Fisher, 65 Mo. 437; State v. Pullens, 81 Mo. 387; State v. Eades, 68 Mo. 150; State v. Phillips, 78 Mo. 49; State v. Yerger, 86 Mo. 33.
II. The court gave four instructions at the instance of the state and two on the part of the defendant, which taken as a whole presented the case fairly to the jury, and they were certainly as favorable to the defendant as he could ask or expect.
III. The forged instrument was a deed of quitclaim or release of a mortgage which had been given by defendant and wife to one Stephen Rosner on a tract ■ of land in Kansas, to secure the payment of two promissory notes, one for $700 and the other for $600, held by Rosner on defendant, and was acknowledged before Henry P. Scott, a notary public of Jackson county, Missouri, at his office in Kansas City, Missouri, on the twenty-second day of April, 1889. Scott testified that
It is true that defendant in his evidence denied that the deed was executed by his procurement, or that he was in Scott’s office at the time, but he did not deny being in Kansas City on that day. In fact the evidence shows beyond question that he was in the city at the time and remained there for two or three days. The evidence establishes the guilt of defendant beyond the possibility of a doubt, and being unable to find any reversible error in the trial of the cause or in the record, the judgment is affirmed.