Pafford v. State, 20786.
| Decision Date | 24 January 1940 |
| Docket Number | No. 20786.,20786. |
| Citation | 135 S.W.2d 990 |
| Parties | PAFFORD v. STATE. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Appeal from District Court, Brown County; E. J. Miller, Judge.
O. D. Pafford was convicted of driving an automobile on a public highway while he was intoxicated, and he appeals.
Judgment reversed, and cause remanded.
Callaway & Callaway, of Brownwood, for appellant.
Lloyd W. Davidson, State's Atty., of Austin, for the State.
The offense is driving an automobile upon a public highway while intoxicated. The punishment assessed is confinement in the state penitentiary for a term of one year.
The record shows that about dark on the night of June 17, 1939, a Texas ranger, Mr. Gault, on his way from Lubbock to Austin met an automobile near Zepher in Brown County. The driver of this car drove over to the left hand side of the highway and caused the ranger to drive his car down in a pit beside the road. Gault turned around, followed the driver, overtook him, arrested him and carried him to jail in Brownwood. Both Mr. Gault and the officers at the jail in Brownwood testified that appellant was very drunk. At his trial, appellant entered a plea of guilty and asked for a suspension of sentence. The jury found him guilty, assessed his punishment as above stated, and declined to recommend that his sentence be suspended.
Appellant has but one bill of exception in the record in which he complains of the court's action in overruling his motion for a new trial based on misconduct of the jury. He charged in his amended motion for a new trial that during their deliberations Grady Calvin (one of the jurors) said: "I have known the defendant for several—three or four years, and he works over at Lewis Templins' filling station and I don't know for certain whether or not he has been bootlegging or transporting whisky." Whereupon another member of the jury, H. C. Buhler, remarked: "Well, I know this fellow now, and have known him ever since I put in my filling station in the "Y" in the North part of Brownwood in the vicinity of where the defendant worked and that place where he worked over there all time he was in Brownwood, is a regular bootleggers hangout and run by a bunch of bootleggers."
Upon a hearing of the motion, the jurors testified among other things that appellant had offered a number of witnesses who testified that his reputation as a law-abiding citizen in the community in which he lived was good. That on cross-examination, these witnesses were asked if they had not heard that appellant had been transporting whisky in and about Brownwood. One of these witnesses replied that he had heard as much. All of the other witnesses denied having heard of it.
Mr. Buhler, the foreman of the jury, denied that he made the statements attributed to him by the juror, Calvin, but admitted that such statement or one of like import was made by some member of the jury. That some member of the jury stated in the jury room during their discussion of the case as follows: "Well, if he worked over there in a bootlegging joint, they...
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