Lawrence v. State
| Court | Supreme Court of Texas |
| Citation | 14 Tex. 432 |
| Parties | RICHARD LAWRENCE v. THE STATE. |
| Decision Date | 01 January 1855 |
No prescribed formulary is necessary to constitute the taking of an appeal in a criminal case, but the party must in some way manifest his determination not to abide the decision, but to invoke a revision of the judgment by the appellate court; that is, he must appeal, and that he has done so must appear by the record.
A writ of error does not lie in a criminal case.
Error from Cherokee. The plaintiff in error was convicted at the Spring Term, 1854, of murder in the second degree and sent to the penitentiary for ten years. There was no entry in the record of any action by the convict during the term indicative of an intention to appeal. This writ of error was obtained in the ordinary mode pursued in civil cases by application to the clerk. The Attorney General moved to dismiss for want of jurisdiction.
Attorney General, for motion to dismiss. In the cases of White v. The State, Galveston, 1854, and of Alexander v. The State, Tyler, 1854, which have been supposed to rest upon the same grounds with this as to their claim to jurisdiction here, appeals were prayed and not granted below, because of the inability of the appellants to give the required security upon recognizances, which were then required by the letter of the law on appeals in all bailable cases. But long before the trial of this party the law was changed in this respect, not only permitting but requiring the defendant to be remanded to prison upon an appeal in a case of felony, which this is. (Criminal Law, Feb. 9, 1854, cap. 49, sec. 57, p. 68; Id., sec. 83, p. 71.) It is true it was held in Hammons's case, (8 Tex. R., 272,) while the recognizance rule of security existed in all cases not capital, that notice or prayer of appeal was not essential to an appeal to this court by the defendant in a criminal case; but now, especially where no recognizance can legally be found in the record in a case of this grade to indicate an intention of appealing when a defendant does not ask to be remanded to the common jail, as is the requirement of the law upon an appeal in case of felony, but on the contrary, instead of intimating a design to appeal and asking, as would be his legal right, that the sentence be withheld till he could prosecute the same, quietly permits the sentence to be pronounced and put in execution by his being conveyed to and confined in the penitentiary, and produces here, as his title deed to jurisdiction on appeal, the certificate of his receipt in that institution in execution of the final sentence of the law. The case is plainly, then, one of a writ in error, as in Barber's case,a1 prosecuted and petitioned for after sentence pronounced and put in execution, instead of one of an attempted appeal, as in White's and Alexander's cases, prayed for before sentence.
Hood and Wiggins, contra. The Constitution gives the right of appeal, subject to such regulations as the Legislature may prescribe, and the Legislature has directed what a party in a criminal case shall do to obtain an appeal. Then the question is narrowed down to this: Has Richard Lawrence complied with the requisitions of the Legislature? We take it for granted that, on the general principle of law that “all reasonable doubts are to operate in favor of the accused,” this court will require absolutely nothing of the criminal that is not plainly...
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Offield v. State
......The entries on the judge's docket will not supply the place of or supersede the necessity for an entry upon the record." See, also, Lawrence v. State, 14 Tex. 432; Hughes v. State, 33 Tex. 683. If this were an original proposition, the writer individually would be inclined to hold that, where notice of appeal had been given at the proper time and entry made on the judge's docket, a nunc pro tunc order might be made at a ......
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Baker v. State
......C. P., which requires as a condition precedent the entry of notice of appeal. Construing this statute, the court has uniformly disclaimed jurisdiction where there was a failure to comply with it. Lawrence v. State, 14 Tex. 432; Thomas v. State, 56 Tex. Cr. R. 246, 119 S. W. 846; and other cases collated in Vernon's Texas Criminal Statute; Texas Criminal Statute, vol. 2, p. 877. The efficacy of article 634, supra, in preventing a review on appeal of the order of the trial court granting a change in ......
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Suesberry v. State
......The entries on the judge's docket will not supply the place of, or supersede the necessity for, an entry upon the record." Lawrence v. State, 14 Tex. 432; Hughes v. State, 33 Tex. 683. This has always been the rule in this court, that the entry or order to be of any force and effect must be carried forward into the minutes of the court; and, where the entry was not made in the minutes at the term of court, no nunc pro tunc ......
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Shute v. State, 013-87
...that a defendant must take the initiative to make known his intent and purpose to appeal has always been the rule. See Lawrence v. The State, 14 Tex. 432 (1855): "[T]he party aggrieved by the decision of the [trial] court ... must in some way manifest his determination not to abide the deci......