Morris v. State
| Decision Date | 11 March 1959 |
| Docket Number | No. 30499,30499 |
| Citation | 322 S.W.2d 632,168 Tex.Crim. 29 |
| Parties | Julius MORRIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Texas, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Harkness & Friedman, Texarkana, for appellant.
Leon B. Douglas, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.
DICE, Commissioner.
The conviction is for murder without malice; the punishment, 5 years.
The evidence is undisputed that on the night in question the appellant stabbed the deceased with a butcher knife. The stabbing occurred in front of a house occupied by the appellant as the two were walking on a sidewalk. According to the State's witnesses the deceased was making no attack upon appellant and after appellant stabbed the deceased, the deceased fell, crawled to the steps of a house nearby and the appellant ran. After the stabbing Officer L. C. White came upon the scene and found the dead body of the deceased lying on the steps with one wound over an eye and another wound in the shoulder. It was further shown that when Officer White arrived at the scene the appellant fled and hid under a house where he was arrested by the officer and carried to jail.
Appellant's voluntary written confession made to the district attorney after his arrest was introduced in evidence in which he stated that around midnight on the night in question Gertrude Ivory, a woman with whom he lived, 'woke me up and told me that some man had been messing with her'; that she pointed out the man to him and
As a witness in his own behalf appellant testified that on the night in question he was awakened by Gertrude Ivory who told him that a man had grabbed her; that he went to the door where a man was standing in the hall who he later learned was the deceased; that he asked the deceased what he was doing and the deceased replied that 'he was going to get Gertrude out of there or either kill me'; that he then followed the deceased outside 'to scare him away and that is when I stabbed him.' Appellant testified that he did not intend to stab the deceased but admitted that he did stab him one time over the eye. Appellant further testified that while in the house the deceased called him a black S.O.B. and ran his hand in his bosom and 'I thought he was going to kill me.'
Appellant insists that the court erred in overruling his motion for an instructed verdict because there was no competent evidence that the deceased died from wounds inflicted by the appellant and in support of his contention calls attention to the fact that the State did not present any expert testimony from a doctor or undertaker as to the cause of death of the deceased. While proof thereof may be made by the expert opinion of a doctor or undertaker, opinion evidence is not the only mode of establishing the cause of death of a deceased. The cause of death may be proved by circumstances. 22 Tex.Jur. par. 172, page 725; Tellez v. State, 162 Tex.Cr.R. 456, 286 S.W.2d 154. The evidence in the instant case is undisputed that on the night in question appellant stabbed the deceased with a butcher knife; that the deceased fell and crawled to the steps of a house nearby where he was later found dead by Officer White with two wounds on his body. It was shown by the testimony of the deceased's brother that the deceased was in good health and there is no evidence of any other cause for the death of the deceased. Such evidence was sufficient to establish that the cause of death of the deceased was from a stab wound inflicted by the appellant. See Tellez v. State, supra.
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