Mondragon v. State
| Decision Date | 01 January 1870 |
| Citation | 33 Tex. 480 |
| Parties | JESUS MONDRAGON v. THE STATE. |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
1. The court below, having granted a change of venue in a felony case, refused to hear proof offered by the defendant that the court house of M. county was the nearest court house, and on the ground that a speedy trial could not be obtained in M. county, ordered the cause to be removed to C. county. The cause having been removed as ordered, the defendant pleaded to the jurisdiction of the district court of C. county; but his plea was overruled. Held, that under article 2999, Paschal's Digest, the court below had a right to remove the cause to C. county, if it was satisfied that there was “some valid objection” to M. county; and it is not material in what manner the court below became satisfied that there was such objection to M. county, unless it appeared from the record that the defendant's cause was actually and positively prejudiced by the action of the court.
2. The jury were instructed that “if stolen property is traced to the possession of the defendant, he must show that he came lawfully by it, or the law considers him the thief.” Held, that inasmuch as the evidence showed the defendant's possession of the property to have been recent after the commission of the theft, there was no error in the instruction of which he could complain.
3. In December the defendant was found in possession of goods which had been stolen on the first of November. Held, that the possession was sufficiently recent to require that the defendant should explain it so as to exonerate him from the legal imputation of guilt.
APPEAL from Comal. Tried below before the Hon. M. B. Walker.
The appellant was indicted at the October term, 1869, of the criminal court of the city of San Antonio, for burglariously entering a house and stealing therefrom a pair of gaiters, a shawl and twelve yards of merino. He made an application for a change of the venue, based on affidavits that so great a prejudice had been excited against him that he could not get a fair trial in Bexar county. There seems to have been no controversy over the change of venue, except as to the county to which the cause should be removed. The court in which the indictment was found was presided over by the Hon. V. P. Van Antwerp, who appears to have acted either on his personal knowledge or upon information not embodied in the record of the case. The defendant appears to have insisted that Medina was the county to which the cause must be removed, its court house at Castroville being the nearest court house to San Antonio of those in all the counties adjoining Bexar. No objection to Medina county was made or suggested in the application for the change of venue, and that being the case the defendant's counsel manifestly considered that the statute, Pas. Dig. art. 2998, was mandatory and required that the cause should be removed to Medina, and that there was no power in the court to send it to any other county. Accordingly, when the matter was before the court at San Antonio, he offered evidence, according to his bill of exceptions, So the court ordered that this and two other indictments of a similar character against Mondragon, should be removed to Comal county, reciting in its order that it appeared to the court “that speedy trials of the above causes cannot be obtained in Medina county.”
This cause came on for trial in the district court of Comal county at its November term, 1869, when the defendant filed the following plea under oath, as a plea to the jurisdiction:
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Coffman v. State
...v. State, 4 Tex. App. 186; Rothschild v. State, 7 Tex. App. 519; Cox v. State, 8 Tex. App. 254 [34 Am. Rep. 746]; Mondragon v. State, 33 Tex. 480." (Italics above When appellant presented his motion to change the venue, under the previous decision of this court, claiming it should be made t......
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State v. Jenkins
...88 N. C. 665; Warren v. State, 1 G. Greene (Iowa) 106; Com. v. Berney, 28 Pa. Super. Ct. 61; Yates v. State, 37 Tex. 202; Mondragon v. State, 33 Tex. 480. In the case at bar the owner missed the hog from the range about the first of May, and some time in June he found it in the possession o......
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McHenry v. State
...three, four and one-half, and eleven months is not too long, and that such possession is a circumstance tending to show guilt. Mondragon v. State, 33 Tex. 480; Wiley v. State, 92 Ark. 586, 124 S.W. 249; v. United States (C. C. A.) 271 F. 454; State v. Miller, 45 Minn. 521, 48 N.W. 401. In S......
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Conn v. State, 21799.
...upon them, the presumption prevails that the court considered only such evidence as was legally admissible. In the case of Mondragon v. State, 33 Tex. 480, 483, Judge Lindsay, speaking for the Supreme Court, said: "When the change was made to Comal county, the defendant offered to prove tha......