Roberts v. State
| Decision Date | 27 January 1894 |
| Citation | 24 S.W. 895 |
| Parties | ROBERTS v. STATE. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Appeal from district court, Milam county; John N. Henderson, Judge.
Oceola Roberts was convicted of theft from the person, and appeals. Affirmed.
Henderson & Streetman, for appellant. R. L. Henry, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
This conviction was for theft from the person, and the punishment assessed at two years' confinement in the penitentiary. The sufficiency of the verdict is called in question. As found in the record, the verdict reads as follows: "We, the jury, find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment, and assess his punishment at conprisonment in the state penitentiary for the term of two years." The original verdict is found in the record, but, if identified so that we could consider it, we find the very word "confinement" or "conprisonment" too badly torn to be able to form any conclusion as to how it was written by the jury as corrected by the court. We shall consider the verdict as found copied in the judgment above quoted in the determination of the case. "It is well settled," as was said in Birdwell's Case, "where the sense is clear, that neither incorrect orthography nor ungrammatical language will render a verdict illegal or void, and that it is to be reasonably construed, and in such manner as to give it the meaning intended to be conveyed by the jury." Birdwell v. State, (Tex. Cr. App.) 20 S. W. 556, (decided Tyler term, A. D. 1892, of this court;) Stepp v. State, 31 Tex. Crim. R. 349, 20 S. W. 753. If the word "confinement" was written "conprisonment," and such spelling constitutes no word in the English language, still the verdict is perfectly intelligible. "At conprisonment" may be rejected from such verdict without affecting it in the least. It would still be complete, and "assess his punishment in the state penitentiary for the term of two years." When viewed in the light of the indictment and the charge of the court, it is too plain for discussion that the intention of the jury was to, and they did, convict defendant of theft from the person. We cannot assent to set aside verdicts for such supposed errors as this.
It is insisted that the charge in regard to the defendant's explanation of the stolen property, while sufficient if applied in ordinary theft cases, is incorrect, and fundamentally wrong, when applied to the case in hand. We are unable to appreciate this distinction. While the different phases of...
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