Carlisle v. State
| Citation | 21 S.W. 358 |
| Parties | CARLISLE v. STATE. |
| Decision Date | 11 February 1893 |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Texas. Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas |
Appeal from district court, Grayson county; T. J. Brown, Judge.
John T. Carlisle was convicted as an accomplice of the murder of W. T. Sharman, and appeals. Affirmed.
John F. Crowe, for appellant. R. L. Henry, Asst. Atty. Gen., and C. H. Smith, for the State.
In 1880, in Lee county, Tex., one Samuel Sparks was murdered in the town of Giddings, at night. J. M. Brown was sheriff of said county. In 1887 or 1888, Brown having moved to Ft. Worth, indictments were presented against Ed Myers and J. T. Carlisle for the murder of Sparks. At the time of the killing, Ed Myers was deputy sheriff for Brown. In the fall of 1888 Myers was tried, found guilty of murder in the second degree, and sentenced to 20 years in the penitentiary. On the trial of Myers, W. T. Sharman, the only eyewitness to the killing, testified that he "was an eye witness to the homicide of Sparks; that he was standing within a few feet of Sparks when he was killed; that Carlisle and Sparks were walking arm and arm towards Sparks' horse, which was hitched near by, and that Myers slipped up behind them, and, the night being dark, he stooped to get Sparks' head above the horizon, and fired a pistol directly at Sparks' head, the ball entering the base of the brain, and ranging upward and forward; that Sparks fell dead, whereupon Carlisle and Myers ran away; that he recognized Carlisle by his voice." There was deadly enmity existing between J. M. Brown and Sparks. In the city of Denison, Grayson county, between the hours of 1 and 2 o'clock A. M. on the night of the 28th of April, 1892, while lying in bed with his wife and infant child, W. T. Sharman was shot with a shotgun by some person standing upon a ladder placed against the house, shooting over the top of the window sash, which had been lowered about six inches. Charles Luttrell was indicted as principal, tried, and convicted of murder of the first degree with the death penalty; appealed to this court, and the judgment was affirmed. On May 25, 1892, John T. Carlisle was indicted, being charged as an accomplice, also, for the murder of W. T. Sharman; was on the 28th of October, 1892, tried and convicted of murder in the first degree, with the death penalty assessed against him also. From this conviction and judgment he appeals.
The acts constituting appellant an accomplice occurring in Collin county, counsel for appellant contends that Grayson county, the county of the homicide, was without authority to try the case. If an accomplice to a felony be guilty of a distinct offense from the felony committed by his principal, the position of counsel is well taken. We have no definition of a crime named or called "accomplice," but we are informed by our Code what acts and things will make a person doing them an accomplice to all felonies to which there can be an accomplice. We are aware that there are numerous opinions of learned courts strongly intimating that an accessory before the fact (our accomplice) is guilty of a distinct offense from that of his principal. We desire to notice the reason or legal ratiocination of these opinions. The following proposition is supported by a strong line of authorities: Accessory before the fact in one state, to crime committed in another, cannot be punished in the state where the substantive crime is committed. The reasoning by which this proposition is sustained is that, as the acts constituting a person an accessory occurred in a state other than that in which the principal committed the crime, the state of the substantive crime cannot punish those acts or the perpetrators, because done beyond the jurisdiction of the state in which the crime is committed by the principal. Let us examine this subject, in the light of the same authorities which support the above proposition, a little further. A. lives in Texas. He procures B., who also lives in Texas, to go to Missouri, and there commit an act which is a felony in Missouri. B. is innocent of anything wrong in what he does. These same authorities hold that Missouri would have authority to try and punish A. Upon what ground? Because A. would be the principal. Again, A. employs B. to go to Missouri, and there commit a misdemeanor. B., with full knowledge of...
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...the general rule of law is that what one does through another's agency is to be regarded as done by himself." Carlisle v. State, 31 Tex.Cr.R. 537, 546, 21 S.W. 358, 359 (1893). Thus, one can only reasonably conclude that these common law distinctions have been manipulated for several hundre......
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...places the venue in Cherokee county for the trial of the accessory, Dent. Sikes v. State (Tex. Cr. App.) 28 S. W. 688; Carlisle v. State, 31 Tex. Cr. R. 537, 21 S. W. 358. It may be contended that the facts in this case do not make appellant an accessory under article 86, Pen. Code. We thin......
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