The opinion of the District Court of Appeal, Second District, Division One, by Conrey, P. J., is hereby adopted and forms a part of the opinion and decision of this court. Said opinion reads:

The case in many of its features is a most unusual one. The defendant was charged in general language with the crime of grand theft. The specific acts, however, upon which the prosecution relied, and upon which the convictions were obtained, consisted of various acts of false representations as to the use the defendant was to make of moneys furnished by the complaining witness Dabney in promoting a cult, if it may be so called, of which defendant was the founder and ruling power and the complaining witness Dabney had been a zealous devotee and understudy of said defendant for approximately four and a half years. In fact he had served as the president of the organization and was at all times during said period active in promoting its temporal and spiritual welfare. In general business affairs he was experienced and successful, and had become affluent. His wife was in hearty and" active co-operation and accord with him in the financial assistance which he rendered the defendant to the end that she might bring to pass the things which passed all understanding.

The evidence introduced by the prosecution took a wide range embracing within its scope the claims of the defendant (as asserted by the prosecution’s witnesses), that she was an ambassador of the Lord invested with divine power. The claim of the prosecution is and must be that she was a mere pretender, an impostor, and knew that she possessed no such power. If she was misguided in her professions of power, but in fact actually believed that she possessed it, she would not be amenable to the criminal law, but her case would be psychopathic in form. Her mental status, however, is one of fact which the jury and not the court may adjudge.

Criminal statutes which prescribe punishment for false representations primarily were intended to protect persons against those who report falsely with respect to their earthly and material possessions. Any legislative attempt to limit or regulate persons in their claims to the possession of exceptional spiritual power or knowledge would be rejected as a dangerous invasion of the state into the realm of religious freedom and privilege, which, from the beginning of our government, has been guarded by constitutional barriers. The framers of our criminal statutes had in mind material affairs and not spiritual matters nor the punishment of persons who claim or represent themselves, by divine favor, to be endowed with supernatural power, unless the intent to defraud is discernible in the pretense as to the possession of supernatural powers. This power in the instant case, according to the prosecution’s evidence, was claimed by defendant to be derived from God agreeable with His written word as recorded in Holy Scripture. That book is an open record and all who will may solve for themselves the extent or degree of divine power that mortals may hope to attain. Each person is at liberty to interpret it for himself. That a mere pretender who wittingly and fraudulently imposes upon the credulity of the weak in mind to their financial loss, is guilty of fraud, there can be no doubt. Persons mentally healthy will not be so imposed upon. In the instant case no claim is made of a weakening of mentality on the part of those who accepted the defendant in the role she manifested herself, but they meticulously relate her claim of omniscient power, even sufficient to resurrect the dead, and her claim of knowledge of and power over, all phenomena of nature and all the wealth that heaven and earth contain. The complaining witness and others of defendant’s disciples testified that they had absolute faith in her powers to accomplish the things she pretended to have been empowered to do. Running through the case there appears a vast amount of evidence as to what the defendant in an elaborate, but incongruous undertaking, hoped and promised to do. The whole plan of life and salvation is a babel of ineohereney abounding in absurdities of an extreme type and the wonder is that rational minds should have become obsessed by such chimerical delusions.

The crux of the People’s case did not consist in asserted spiritual power or promises of a spiritual nature, although such matters occupy a large portion of the record, but consists in the promise of a material matter, to wit “The G-reat Sixth Seal”, or “The Lamb’s Book of Life”, a book of many pages, had been written by the defendant and her daughter under angelic dictation; that the labor of taking.the dictation had been a most intensive task, continuing day and night through a series of years; that defendant had obtained several thousands of dollars from the complaining witness for the express purpose of printing said book, but that she had failed to fulfill her promise. Said complaining witness had had many conferences with defendant as to what the book was to contain and among other things he was told that it explained the mysteries of science and the secrets of life; the secrets of resurrecting the dead; the secret of locating gold and precious jewels and all hidden treasures of the earth; restored lost measurements of Solomon and Noah by which all precious minerals could be located and it contained' the secret of radioing from planet to planet. Said complaining witness testified that he was told by the defendant that all of the above secrets had been revealed to them by Angels Gabriel and Michael. The failure to publish and print the book as described by the complaining witness constitutes the main grounds of the prosecution. It is true moneys had been advanced for buildings and maintaining a colony or community and to meet incidental expenses generally, but the interest of the complaining witness centered in the completion and printing of “The Great Sixth Seal” or “The Lamb’s Book of Life”. It was, he professed to believe, the key of entry into the arcanum of all knowledge and the paltry dollars which he had expended in its promotion were as trifles compared with its priceless gifts. What its market or commercial value would have been if published, is another question.

We have set forth but briefly disclosures of the record before us, and in our investigation we have been unable to see what relevancy the gruesome story of the preservation of the body of Willa Rhoades, in the promise of resurrection, could have borne to the issue of whether or not the defendant applied the moneys which she received from the complaining witness to the purposes for which they were procured. The same lack of relevancy exists in the admission of evidence directed to the alleged attempt of the defendant to administer poison to one Sammy Rizzio. We feel, as did the District Court of Appeal, that the evidence as to both of the events above adverted to, must have prejudiced the defendant in the minds of the jury to the extent that the testimony offered in her defense could not have received the deliberate consideration that the law accords to all persons charged with crime. All other matters of importance have been properly disposed of in the decision of said District Court of Appeal.

The judgment and order are reversed.

Richards, J., Preston, J., Shenk, J., Curtis, J., Langdon, J., and Waste, C. J., concurred.