Hopper v State

Hopper v State
1916 OK CR 35
156 P. 240
12 Okl.Cr. 327
Case Number: No. A-2463
Decided: 04/01/1916
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

1. APPEAL Verdict Evidence.

2. CATTLE THEFT Sufficiency of Evidence.

Appeal from District Court, Haskell County; J.H. Brown, Judge.

Presley Hopper, convicted of cattle theft, appeals. Affirmed.

A.L. Beckett, for plaintiff in error.

R. McMillan, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

PER CURIAM. The plaintiff in error, Presley Hopper, and his brother Oscar Hopper were jointly informed against for the theft of a certain steer, the property of J.M. Duke. A severance was demanded and upon his separate trial Presley Hopper was convicted and his punishment fixed at five years imprisonment in the penitentiary. From the judgment rendered on the verdict he has appealed.

No brief has been filed and when the case was called for final submission no appearance was made on behalf of the plaintiff in error, whereupon the case was submitted on the merits.

It appears from the evidence that J.M. Duke missed two or three steers from his range and in making a search for them found one steer not far from where two steers had been butchered in a thicket in or near the defendant's pasture. The steer in question was a two-year-old dun colored steer and it appeared that one of the animals butchered in the pasture was dun colored.

Page 328

Several witnesses testified to seeing the defendants driving steers near the pasture, one of which answered the description of the alleged stolen steer.