Stewart v. State
| Decision Date | 10 February 1897 |
| Docket Number | (No. 1,136.) |
| Citation | 38 S.W. 1144 |
| Parties | STEWART v. STATE. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Appeal from Young county court; N. J. Timmons, Judge.
J. C. Stewart was convicted of violating the local option law, and appeals. Reversed.
Johnson & Aikin, for appellant. Mann Trice, for the State.
Conviction for violating the local option law; hence this appeal.
This is a companion case to Nos. 1,135 and 1,137, against the same party, just decided. 38 S. W. 1143, 1151. All the questions are the same in those cases as in this case, except one. R. E. Coon, a witness for the state, is the prosecutor in this case, and the party to whom the whisky was sold. He is the main witness for the state. We believe that he swears to facts which, if true, would authorize a verdict of guilty. Appellant testified in the case. He denies most emphatically that he had ever sold any intoxicating liquor to Coon, and denies the transaction testified to by Coon. Upon cross-examination, over the objections of the defendant, the state proved by him that he had been arrested in other cases for violating the local option law. This testimony was not admissible, as presented by this record. It was calculated to induce the jury to believe that, as he had been arrested in other case for violations of the local option law, probably he was guilty in this case. The fact that he may have been charged and arrested for violations of the local option law, or that he had been guilty of violating the local option law, was not such a crime as was admissible for the purpose of impeaching his testimony in this case. See this subject discussed and decided in the following cases: Carroll v. State, 32 Tex. Cr. R. 431, 24 S. W. 100; Goode v. State, 32 Tex. Cr. R. 505, 24 S. W. 102; Brittain v. State (Tyler term, 1896) 37 S. W. 758. The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.
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Southworth v. State
...evidence of other offenses, and this court has held that a local option violation does not involve moral turpitude (Stewart v. State [Tex. Cr. App.] 38 S. W. 1144, and cases there cited), by the same process of reasoning that he could be impeached because he may have said he never kept into......
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Jennings v. State
...v. State, 55 Tex. Cr. R. 147, 115 S. W. 587; Marks v. State, 78 S. W. 512; Lee v. State, 45 Tex. Cr. R. 51, 73 S. W. 407; Stewart v. State, 38 S. W. 1144; Tyrrell v. State, 38 S. W. 1011; Merriwether v. State, 55 Tex. Cr. R. 439, 116 S. W. 1150, in which case Judge Ramsey, passing on the qu......
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Shepherd v. State
...Crim. Law, § 566, for collation of authorities. Some of these it may be well enough to cite: Tyrell v. State, 38 S. W. 1011; Stewart v. State, 38 S. W. 1144; Lee v. State, 45 Tex. Cr. R. 51, 73 S. W. 407; Jennings v. State, 55 Tex. Cr. R. 147, 115 S. W. 587; Marks v. State, 78 S. W. 512; Ha......
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Merriwether v. State
...such evidence for that purpose and that only." The cases cited above are difficult to reconcile with the case of Stewart v. State, 37 Tex. Cr. R. 135, 38 S. W. 1144, except on the proposition that in the Stewart Case the mere arrest for a similar offense was sought to be shown, and not a co......