Sample v. State, 26189
| Decision Date | 28 January 1953 |
| Docket Number | No. 26189,26189 |
| Parties | SAMPLE v. STATE. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Schlesinger, Goodstein & Semaan, San Antonio, for appellant.
Austin F. Anderson, Crim. Dist. Atty., and Richard J. Woods, Asst. Crim. Dist. Atty., San Antonio, George P. Blackburn, State's Atty., of Austin, for the State.
The offense is murder; the punishment, twenty-five years.
It is readily deducible from the evidence that the deceased had been having clandestine acts of intercourse with the appellant's wife Rita. It was also shown by witnesses for the State and the accused that the appellant had sought the aid of deceased's wife to bring such affair to a termination. This is the only conceivable motive for the homicide or reason for the appellant to seek out the deceased. The State's theory was that appellant shot the deceased as he walked up to the appellant's automobile. The appellant and his witnesses supported appellant's defense that he had gone to talk to the deceased in the hope of persuading deceased to leave his wife alone; that deceased attacked the appellant; and that appellant, who had just returned from target shooting, shot him in his own self-defense with a .22 calibre rifle which he had in his automobile.
The State was permitted to cross-examine appellant, over proper objection, about his several marriages and divorces prior to his marriage with his present wife. The court permitted such cross-examination on the grounds that the evidence so adduced was admissible in passing upon the credibility of the accused and upon his state of mind at the time of the homicide.
The proof as to Mary Frances Bishop and Gladys Short, whom the State sought to prove he had never divorced, was admissible as tending to support the State's theory that the appellant was not legally married to Rita at the time of the homicide.
The other marriages and divorces, however, tended to prove no issue in the case, and proof thereof was unquestionably injurious to appellant's case.
It has been the consistent holding of this Court that proof of prior marriages and divorces is not admissible unless such evidence tends to solve some disputed issue in the case. We have, since Webb v. State, 36 Tex.Cr.R. 41, 35 S.W. 380, reversed convictions where such proof is made. A full review of the authorities may be found in Spears v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 216 S.W.2d 812.
The converse of the situation here presented was before this...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Johnson v. State
...in the case. Boyde v. State, 513 S.W.2d 588 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); Hatke v. State, 455 S.W.2d 310 (Tex.Cr.App.1970); Sample v. State, 158 Tex.Cr.R. 200, 254 S.W.2d 401 (1953). The fact that information in this vein was brought out before the jury without objection, does not make it relevant.The......
-
Wilbanks v. State
...v. State, 164 Tex.Cr.R. 204, 298 S.W.2d 132, 62 A.L.R.2d 1064; Spears v. State, 153 Tex.Cr.R. 14, 216 S.W.2d 812; Sample v. State, 158 Tex.Cr.R. 220-222, 254 S.W.2d 401; People v. Betts, 94 Mich. 642, 54 N.W. 487; State v. Powell, 120 Kan. 772, 254 P. 128; Knight v. State, Ala., 142 So.2d 8......
-
Boyde v. State
...the question. Appellant's motion for mistrial was overruled. In Hatke v. State, 455 S.W.2d 310, this Court quoted from Sample v. State, 158 Tex.Cr.R. 200, 254 S.W.2d 401, where it was 'It has been the consistent holding of this court that proof of prior marriages and divorces is not admissi......
-
Hatke v. State, 42742
...this defendant has to show for thirty years of life or (sic) four broken marriages, three ending in divorce. * * *' In Sample v. State, 158 Tex.Cr.R. 200, 254 S.W.2d 401, we said, 'It has been the consistent holding of this Court that proof of prior marriages and divorces is not admissible ......