Brewer v. State
Brewer v. State
Opinion of the Court
Conviction is for murder. This is the second appeal of this case, the defendant having been given ninety-nine years on his first trial which judgment and verdict was reversed because of an error in the court’s charge. The facts as set out in the court’s opinion reported in 157 S. W. (2d) 388 clearly present a brief resume of the facts proven at the second trial. As stated in our former opinion “The State’s case showed an unprovoked and unjustified killing.” The defendant was given thirteen years by the second jury on the trial of these facts and he now presents his appeal to this court on complained of errors alleged to have occurred in such second trial. Only three propositions covering five of his nine bills of exception and one of his approximately one hundred exceptions to the court’s charge are briefed and presented to this court.
Bill of exception number one relates to the court’s action in sustaining the State’s challenge to a venireman because he entertained conscientious scruples in regard to the infliction of the punishment of death for crime. There is incorporated in the bill by order of the court the question and answer investigation of the proposed juror, including his examination by the district attorney and by counsel for appellant; also by the court. It would be useless to set out at length such examination. The bill reflects a patient effort on the part of the court to ascertain the mind of the venireman towards the infliction of the death penalty. We conclude that the court was correct in holding that the proposed juror had conscientious scruples against such punishment. If the venireman’s examination disclosed that he himself was uncertain about the state of his mind upon the question the opinion in Sawyer v. State, 39 Tex. Cr. R. 557, throws light upon the proper course to be pursued by the trial judge.
It is claimed by counsel for appellant that in the bill the court certified to the qualification of the juror, hence certified error in sustaining the State’s challenge. Such position is based on the recital in the bill that among other veniremen “was one F. J. Dreer who was in all things qualified by law to
Bills of exception numbers 4, seven, eight and nine in various forms relate to the same complaint, viz: that over appellant’s objection the State was permitted to prove that appellant had whipped his daughter because she was going with deceased. This fact was first developed from the witness Gatlin who detailed a conversation with appellant in which the latter told witness that his daughter had run away with deceased, and asked witness “What would you do when you find him? Would you just leave him lying where you found him?” It was in this conversation that appellant told witness that he had whipped his daughter for keeping company with deceased. Upon cross examination of the daughter the State elicited from her that appellant had objected to her going with deceased and had whipped her for so doing. Appellant objected to the development of this fact for various reasons, among them being that same was irrelevant and prejudicial, and was evidence of an extraneous offense for which no complaint had ever been filed against appellant, and that such evidence was not material to the matters in issue, and had no connection therewith, and was evidence of abuse of appellant’s daughter. In reply to appellant’s contention the State cites Art. 1257a P. C. which as here applicable reads as follows: “In all prosecutions for felonious homicide the State or the defendant shall be permitted to offer testimony as to all relevant facts and circumstances surrounding the killing and the previous relationship existing between the accused and the deceased, together with all relevant facts and circumstances going to show the condition of the mind of the accused at the time of the homicide, which may be considered by the jury in determining the punishment to be assessed.”
It is appellant’s further position that the court should have instructed the jury that violence used by appellant upon the person of his daughter in the exercise of moderate restraint or correction was not unlawful. Appellant raises the question by an objection to the court’s charge as not embracing therein such an instruction. Appellant bases his proposition on Subdivision 1 of Art. 1142 P. C. If appellant were being prosecuted for an assault upon his fifteen year old daughter such an instruction under certain facts would be pertinent. Proof of the whipping went into this case to show appellant’s feelings towards deceased. There is no intimation that they were immoderate.
The foregoing discussion disposes of all the questions briefed by appellant. Bills of exception numbers two, three, five and six, not urged in brief or in oral argument, have been considered, and are not thought to present error.
The court’s charge appears to have instructed the jury upon every possible phase of the case. Objections to the charge cover twenty-five pages of the transcript, and only one objection is urged in appellant’s brief or in oral argument. We discover no fault in the charge unless in some particulars it is more favorable to appellant than the law required.
The judgment is affirmed.
070rehearing
ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
We have reconsidered the earnest argument made in behalf of a father who felt that he was justified in the slaying of the man who had married his daughter against his will and, as any father must, we sympathize with the plight of one who suffers a disappointment and who felt outraged because of her improvident marriage. However, murder is not his proper remedy.
From the time that the deceased began to go with appellant’s daughter, the resentment grew in appellant’s mind against the boy and he punished the girl for going with him contrary to the father’s wishes. When he realized that they had eloped together, he must have understood their marriage intentions as a natural consequence, for there is nothing in the evidence to
The argument presented in the motion in favor of the bill of exception to the admission of this testimony does not answer the very logical reasoning in the original opinion. We find ourselves unable to add force to that opinion or to agree that additional authorities are necessary to support it. The other matters have been considered and are not believed to call for a reversal of the case.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting).
My Brethren have agreed to the affirmance of this cause, and to the overruling of the motion for a rehearing. I am not in accord with their entire views on this matter, especially as shown by their treatment of bills Nos. 4, 7, 8 and 9.
The facts show that appellant and his wife were the parents of five boys and one girl; that the father was especially fond of and proud of his daughter, Virginia Ruth, who was born on March 9, 1926, and at the time of this unfortunate occurrence she was fourteen years old, and an honor student in her school. This young girl had not been allowed to keep company with boys, but the father and mother had learned that the deceased, Glen Cox, nineteen years of age, had been paying some attention to the daughter. This was objectionable upon the part of the girl’s parents. The father, appellant, had an interview with the deceased, and told him that he objected to such attentions being paid to his daughter. Appellant testified' that from conversations with the deceased, relative to his conduct with girls, he did not think he was the right kind of boy to associate with
Appellant’s bills Nos. 4, 7, 8 and 9 all relate to the proof upon the part of the State that the father punished his daughter for going with the deceased. Bill No. 4 says that the fact of
Bill No. 7 relates to Virginia Ruth, upon her cross-examination, being called upon to testify to the fact that her father had whipped her for going With Glen Cox.
Appellant objected and excepted to the trial court’s charge also in that same did not embody an instruction to the jury that a parent had the right of moderate restraint or correction over their child, and violence used in such a manner was lawful, as shown in Art. 1142, P. C. subdiv. 1. Thus the issue became drawn.
The parent’s chastisement of this fourteen year old girl because she was disobeying them and keeping company with this nineteen year old young man was utilized for the purpose of showing animus and malice towards such man, and yet the law, man’s as well, as God’s, gave them that power, and surely imposed upon them the duty of watching over and guiding the conduct of this young girl, even to the extent of punishing her for a failure to obey them. I do not think the fact of her punishment was available to the State for any purpose. It would be a strange doctrine that would take away from the parent the privilege and the duty of guiding the footsteps and guarding the conduct of his young daughter, especially in her association with a man such as appellant knew this one to be. To take the evidence of a disapproval of a clandestine suitor for this young girl’s attentions and utilize the same as an evidence of hatred for and malice against the suitor, carried "to its climax, would cause the parent to be dumb in the presence of his daughter, and even take from him the power to offer an objection to her receiving the attentions of the veriest libertine. .
That this appellant was suffering and tortured, during the near week of his daughter’s disappearance is not only shown but can be gathered from his conduct in. endeavoring to find her and to take her back home. She could not even consent either to yield her body to the deceased, nor could she marry
If this appellant is guilty of any offense, the undisputed facts, so the writer thinks, show him guilty of no higher offense than murder without malice, and I can not agree that the evidence of his punishment to his daughter because of her disobedience was admissible herein for any purpose, and surely, if admitted, Art. 1142, sub. 1, P. C., should have been given, allowing a moderate punishment by a parent upon a child. Appellant’s objection, as well as his wife’s to the attentions being paid by the deceased to the daughter, was amply shown by both parents, as well as by Virginia Ruth’s testimony, and his punishment of the girl could but have served to aggravate the punishment meted out to appellant. If guilty at all, I think the testimony rises no higher than murder without malice. I think this cause should have been reversed because of the admission repeatedly of the father’s punishment of his daughter.
I do not think that the exercise of moderate restraint by a parent over a child could evidence a heart regardless of social duty and fatally bent on mischief, nor that the vigorous objection of the parent of a fourteen year old girl being shown attention by a nineteen year old man whose character was objectionable to the parent is any evidence of hatred upon the part of the parent.
I herewith respectfully enter my dissent in this affirmance and the overruling of this motion.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Earl Thomas Brewer v. State
- Status
- Published