Young v. State

• Decision Date: 27 March 1895
• Citation: 30 S.W. 238
• Parties: YOUNG v. STATE.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

30 S.W. 238

YOUNG v. STATE.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

March 27, 1895.

Appeal from district court, Dallas county; Charles F. Clint, Judge.

George Young, alias Burkett, was convicted of theft, and appeals. Affirmed.

Walter S. Lemmon, for appellant. Mann Trice, for the State.

HENDERSON, J.

This is a conviction for theft of a watch. Appellant was a witness in his own behalf, and testified that Ousley, the owner of the watch, was indebted to him in the sum of $8.50 for labor, and that he would not pay him; that he went to the house of said Ousley; that there was no person at home, except a woman washing in the back yard; that he entered the house, saw the watch, picked it up, and walked out in the yard, held the watch up, and hallooed to the negro woman, and told her that he had Ousley's watch, and that he had taken it because Ousley would not pay him. And he testified that he believed he had a right to take it, to pay himself what Ousley owed him. Upon this phase of the case the court instructed the jury as follows: "If you believe from the evidence that the witness Ousley owed the defendant a debt, or that defendant believed that said Ousley owed him a debt, and, to secure the payment of said debt, he, in good faith, took the watch in question, believing that he had a right to take it to secure his said alleged debt, and that his intention in taking said property was to secure his said debt, and not to deprive the owner of the value of said property, and appropriate it to his own use." Counsel for the appellant insists that the effect of the latter portion of the above charge was to negative and destroy all that had gone before; that the taking of the watch was necessarily to deprive the owner of the value thereof, though it was taken in good faith to pay appellant's debt. We do not think the charge will bear that construction. The jury were clearly told that, if defendant took the watch to secure the payment of said debt, he had a right to so take it, but if, on the other hand, he took it simply to deprive the owner of the value thereof, without allowing the owner to reclaim the property by paying the debt, then he would be guilty. While the charge is not well drawn, yet we do not believe that the jury were confused or misled thereby. The court had already defined to the jury that theft consisted in the fraudulent taking without the consent of the owner, with intent to deprive him of the value thereof, and to appropriate the same to the use of the party taking; and they must have regarded the latter portion of the court's charge, above indicated, as on the character of definition presented in the charge defining theft, and not as a limitation of the taking by defendant under an honest belief that he had a right to take the watch for the purpose of securing his debt. This question did not arise in the case of Butler v. State, 3 Tex. App. 403, and what is there said by the court on this point must be regarded as dicta. But in Wolf...