Before Morriss, C.J., Burgess and Stevens, JJ. Opinion by Chief Justice Morriss OPINION After a Lamar County jury found Bobby Carl Lennox[1] guilty of three counts of forgery of a financial instrument, the trial court sentenced him to seventeen years’ imprisonment on each count, with the sentences to run concurrently. Lennox appeals, maintaining that his sentence was outside the applicable punishment range, that the evidence was insufficient to show that he had the ability to pay court-appointed attorney fees, and that the trial court erred when it failed to hold an evidentiary hearing on his motion for new trial.[2] We conclude that (1) Lennox’s sentences exceeded the applicable punishment range, (2) assessing court-appointed attorney fees was improper, and (3) denying Lennox’s motion for new trial without a hearing was not error. Therefore, we modify each such judgment to correct recitation of the “Degree of Offense” and “Statute for Offense.” As to Count One, we modify the trial court’s judgment and the bill of costs by deleting $390.00 of court-appointed attorney fees, however characterized. We affirm those portions of all three judgments, as modified, finding Lennox guilty of the respective, modified, offenses. Because we find error in the punishment portion of the judgments, we reverse the portion of the judgments imposing punishment, and we remand the causes to the trial court for new punishment hearings. After James Maurice McKnight passed away in 2018, his daughter, Fran King, closed McKnight’s bank account at Guaranty Bank. Later, in December 2018, King asked Frank Norwood to have his auction company organize a sale of McKnight’s estate. Among other individuals, Brandon Crawford, Destiny Brush, and Janae Lewis helped Norwood with the estate sale.[3] Before the sale, King’s family placed some items, including a checkbook, in a “safe room” in McKnight’s home so that the items would not be sold. The evidence demonstrated Lewis’s awareness that those items had been placed in the “safe room.” The estate sale was conducted December 29, 2018. Crawford testified that he and Lennox were “pretty good friends” and that he had worked with Lennox “a couple of times.” Crawford also testified that Lennox admitted to him that he received the checks from the estate sale from Lewis, “from the dead guy,” and to having passed the checks. In January 2019, Nima Sherpa (Nima) was the manager of the Quick Track convenience store in Paris, Texas. Nima testified that she knew Lennox because he regularly came into the store and that Lennox often brought checks to the store in order to cash them. According to Nima, in January 2019, Lennox “passed” checks in the store that had been dated January 7, January 9, and January 12, 2019. The three checks were from McKnight’s bank account and had been made payable to Bobby Lennox. Nima said that, because Lennox was a regular customer, she did not ask him to endorse the checks or to pay the normal check-cashing fee. Nima later learned that the bank “rejected” the three checks for insufficient funds. Gyalbu Sherpa (Gyalbu), also a manager at Quick Track, stated that he knew Lennox because Lennox sometimes did “small jobs” for Quick Track stores. Gyalbu explained that, after Lennox cashed the checks and Gyalbu realized there were insufficient funds in the account, Gyalbu asked Lennox, “I said your checks are bad, why do you pass those checks?” Lennox responded that “[he] worked for somebody and those [were the employer's] checks.” According to Gyalbu, Lennox claimed not to have known the checks were “bad.” McKnight’s daughter, King, stated that, after she closed her father’s account at Guaranty Bank, she received a telephone call from an employee of the bank informing her that one of her father’s bank account checks had gone “through” the bank. King said she reported the incident to law enforcement. She stated that she did not write the check and had never written any check to Lennox. King also said that, as far as she was aware, her father had not known Lennox or hired him to do any work. (1) Lennox’s Sentences Exceeded the Applicable Punishment Range There is no question that the jury convicted Lennox of three counts of forgery of a financial instrument by passing three forged checks, each valued at $100.00 but less than $750.00. Lennox maintains that the three charges should have been categorized as Class B misdemeanors and that punishment enhancement was supported. Instead, the jury was instructed that the charges were state jail felonies. Accordingly, Lennox maintains that the three sentences of seventeen years’ imprisonment exceeded the applicable punishment range. We agree with Lennox. “Forge” is defined, in relevant part, to mean “to alter, make, complete, execute, or authenticate any writing so that it purports: (i) to be the act of another who did not authorize that act.” Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 32.21(a)(1) (Supp.). In this case, Lennox was charged with cashing three financial instruments he had forged. Count One of the indictment alleged, in relevant part, that Lennox, did then and there, with intent to defraud or harm another, pass to Nima Sherpa, a forged writing, knowing such writing to be forged, and such writing had been so made or completed that it purported to be the act of James McKnight, who did not authorize the act, and the writing was a check of the tenor following:
