Coleman v. State

• Decision Date: 31 October 1888
• Parties: COLEMAN <I>v.</I> STATE.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

9 S.W. 609

COLEMAN

v. STATE.

Court of Appeals of Texas.

October 31, 1888.

Appeal from district court, Smith county; FELIX J. McCORD, Judge.

The defendant, James Coleman, was convicted for burglary with intent to rape, and from the judgment takes this appeal. The prosecuting witness testified that, on the night alleged, she and her 10-year-old brother occupied a bed in the room adjoining that occupied by her parents, and that about 10 o'clock she was aroused by the pressure of a hand on her breast. She at once rushed into her parents' room, procured a match, returned to her own, struck the match, and saw a man, whom, by his back only, she recognized as the defendant, in the act of jumping through the window from her room. She ordered him to get out of her room, and, as he passed out the window, he dropped the sash behind him. Witness then returned to her parents' room, and lit the lamp with the same match that she struck in her own room. Her parents then came into her room, and she told them that the man who had just escaped was the defendant. The father of the prosecutrix testified that he heard the call of his daughter, that there was a man in her room, and heard her order him to leave. He also heard a noise like the falling of a window-sash. He then entered the room, but found no man. He afterwards found an upturned tub under his daughter's window. From that point to the well, and thence to a point in a wheat-field, he found the trail of a barefooted person. Beyond that he found a shoe-track which led to a point near the defendant's house. On the next morning he secured the shoes of defendant, and applied them to the shoe-track, but they did not fit. He then applied defendant's bare foot to the bare-foot track, and found it to fit perfectly. When witness first went into his daughter's room, she told him that the man who escaped was the defendant. Davis, one of two men who were sleeping in the house, corroborated the last witness, except he testified that the prosecutrix first said she did not recognize the intruder, and afterwards said that she recognized him as the defendant. Witnesses for the defense testified to a complete alibi, and that they saw the defendant's foot applied to the barefoot track by the state witnesses, and that the track was from a half to an inch longer than the defendant's foot.

White & Edwards, for appellant. Asst. Atty. Gen. Davidson, for the State.

WILLSON, J.

We do not hesitate to say that, as presented to us in the record, the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction. It devolved upon the prosecution to prove satisfactorily, beyond a reasonable doubt, not only that the defendant entered the house, but that he entered it with the specific intent to commit the felony of rape, as charged in the indictment. We...