Case ID: sw_158/html/0272-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PRENDERGAST, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

HALL v. STATE.
    (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.
    June 4, 1913.)
    1. Criminal Law (§ 1092) — Appeal—Filing Bill of Exceptions.
    Where no bill of exceptions was filed to the action of the court in overruling exception challenging'the competency of jurors showing the testimony heard on the motion, until nearly 20 days after court adjourned, it was too late to be considered on appeal, and it must be presumed that the court’s action was correct and justified by the evidence heard.
    [Ed. Note. — For other cases, see Criminal Law, Cent. Dig. §§ 2803, 2829, 28&t-2861, 2919; Dec. Dig. § 1092.]
    2. Homicide (§ 163) — Evidence — Reputation of Deceased.
    In a trial for the murder of defendant’s wife, evidence of her general reputation for virtue and chastity in the community in which she lived was inadmissible for any purpose.
    [Ed. Note. — For other cases, see Homicide, Cent. Dig. §§ 310-317; Dec. Dig. § 163.]
    3. Witnesses (§ 374) — Impeachment—Bias.
    While it is always permissible to show the bias and prejudice of any adverse witness, the testimony offered for such purpose must have some probative force, and it is never permissible to impeach a witness on immaterial matters.
    [Ed. Note. — For other cases, see Witnesses, Cent. Dig. §§ 1201, 1202; Dec. Dig. § 374.]
    4. Witnesses ,(§ 340) — Impeachment—Character and Conduct of Witness.
    Evidence that a witness associated with lewd women is not admissible for the purpose of impeachment.
    [Ed. Note. — For other cases, see Witnesses, Cent. Dig. §§ 1116, 1117, 1119, 1121; Dec. Dig. § 340.]
    Appeal from District Court, Gonzales County; M. Kennon, Judge.
    J. R. Hall was convicted of murder in the second degree, and he appeals.
    Affirmed.
    C. K. Walter, of Gonzales, for appellant. C. E. Lane, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
    
      
      For other cases see same topic and section NUMBER in Dec. Dig. & Am. Dig. Key-No. Series & Rep’r Indexes
    
   PRENDERGAST, J.

Upon an indictment charging appellant with the murder of his wife, a trial resulted in his conviction of murder in the second degree, with a penalty of 20 years confinement in the penitentiary assessed.

It is unnecessary to give any detail statement of the evidence. It was amply sufficient to show that at the time of the alleged murder appellant was about 59 years of age and his wife 35 years of age. The deceased was appellant’s third wife; they married about one year before .the killing. Several months before the killing trouble arose between the parties, and they separated. They afterwards made up, and lived together until some three or four weeks before the killing. They had lived in the country. Some three or four weeks before the killing trouble arose between them, and the deceased was seen to chase appellant out of their house and around an outhouse, and to commit an assault and battery upon him. He made no resistance. On this occasion she was very abusive of him, and used indecent and profane language to him. This resulted in their separation again. He left where they were residing first, going to his son’s, she leaving also, perhaps, the same or the next day, going to the town of Gonzales. She rented a two-roóm house in Gonzales, and lived there alone for the two or three weeks after their separation and until she was murdered. Appellant was very anxious to get his wife to live with him again. He also removed from his son’s to Gonzales, and began to work in the town. He complained to several of his friends of his family trouble, told them of his love for his wife, and his desire to get her to live with him again. He interceded with the county attorney and induced the county attorney late Sunday evening, before she was killed, that night, to see her for him to see if she could not be induced to live with him again. The county attorney called on her just before night Sunday evening and had a talk with her at appellant’s instance along the line desired by him, but she declined to live with appellant again. The county attorney at once so advised appellant, and appellant may have asked the county attorney if there would be any harm in his (appellant’s) going to see his wife and tell her good-bye, and then himself leave the country. He told some other of the witnesses that they both could not live in the same town together, and indicated that he was going to leave there permanently. Soon after the county attorney had this conversation with appellant’s wife and reported the result to appellant, he himself went to see her. Appellant testified in effect that he went to the house where his wife was just before night and just after the county attorney had reported to him; that he knocked at the door and called her, but he had no response from her. 1-Ie thereupon opened the door to the front room and she then came out of the back or shed room into the front room where he was, and asked him, '“What are you doing here?” and some conversation occurred between them; that he sat down on the side of the bed at one end and she on the other end on the same side and that they thus sat and talked for some half hour; that, notwithstanding this was in December, it was quite a warm day and he pulled off both his coat and vest, and hung them on a chair near the bed; that he had pinned on his coat or vest at the time a small picture of himself, and, seeing her noticing it particularly, he took it off and gave it to .her; that he and his wife sat there on the bed some 30 minutes. Among other things he testified: “Then she got up, and just turned around in the floor like, right out sort of to one side and says, ‘You had better leave here right now,’ and was rubbing her hands this way (illustrating), and says, ‘There will be a man here directly that will hill us both.’ I said, ‘If that is the case, I will leave, I wouldn’t have you hurt for nothing on this earth, I love you too well.’ I just reached over and picked up my coat, and out I went, and I didn’t know at the time but what I had the vest too.” Again he testified: “There was no one there except she and I that I know of. I had heard no one walking in the other room, and had heard no one talking. I heard a noise in that other room, it was a noise something like paper rattling, something like that, or maybe a little heavier noise than that, that is all I heard. I had been there something like 20 or 30 minutes, or maybe not but 15 minutes, when I heard that, I don’t know exactly, and I stayed there about 5 or 6 minutes, or maybe 10 minutes after I heard that noise.”

He claims that when she told him to leave, as above shown, he did so, picking up his coat off of the chair and thinking that he had his vest too; that he walked out of the door and after getting off some distance heard his wife say, “Why that’s my husband,” looked back but saw no one, and went on down to the railroad and after passing some Mexicans he got out his knife, cut his throat, stabbed himself several times in the breast with the knife, then jumped in the river to drown himself, but that the water was so cold it like to have frozen him, he came to himself, got hold of a limb, called for help, and some Mexicans came and rescued him. About the middle of the next morning some one saw where blood had run from the house where deceased lived out on the ground. The officers were notified. They then went down to the house where deceased was, and found her sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed, except that one shoe was off, with her head leaning forward, and her shoulder resting against the side of the wall. An axe was found at the foot of the bed and her head crushed, evidently by a lick from the axe which crushed her skull, over her right eye, across her nose, and her left cheek bone. Blood had run profusely over all the bed, the floor, and other places. Appellant’s vest was found on this chair with blood stains on it. It is useless to further describe what was found in the house. The woman was dead and stiff when found.

The woman had rented the house from a man by the name of Stahl. Stahl was an Important witness for the state. Among other things, he testified that he passed this house where the woman was late Sunday evening, and saw her then sitting in the room in her rocking chair, the door partly open; that later he went down in the same locality to get his milch cow; this was just about dusk, or before night; that he then saw appellant come out of this woman’s house and close the door after him, and that appellant started in the direction where soon after he attempted suicide by both cutting himself and throwing himself in the river.

Appellant has but three bills of exceptions, and no questions raised otherwise. By the last of these he complains that two of the jurors were incompetent, and before they were taken upon the jury had expressed themselves against appellant. The court heard evidence on this ground of appellant’s motion by several witnesses, and overruled appellant’s motion. No bill of exception was filed to this action of the. court showing this testimony until nearly 30. days after the court adjourned. Under- the statute ánd the uniform decisions of this court this bill was filed too late to be considered by the court, and we must presume that the action of the court was correct and justified by the evidence heard. Knight v. State, 144 S. W. 967, and cases therein cited; Brewer v. State, 153 S. W. 622, and many other cases unnecessary to cite.

By another bill appellant complains that the court refused to permit him to prove by several witnesses that the general reputation of his wife, the deceased, for virtue and chastity in the community in which she lived was bad. This evidence certainly was not admissible for any purpose.

The other bill shows that while the state’s witness Stahl was on the stand he asked him if it was not a fact that about two or three nights before this killing he was at the deceased woman’s house after dark, trying to gain admission, and that she would not let him in; and, further, if on that occasion he did not state to her that he would be around in the morning and bring her some wine, to which questions Stahl emphatically answered in the negative. He then proposed to prove by his witness Julius Wade that he, Wade, was at the house on this occasion and stayed all night with the woman for immoral purposes, and would have testified that said Stahl did come to said woman’s house two or three nights before her death and tried to gain admission thereto, and that she would not let him in, and that he then stated to her that he would be around the next moaning and bring her some wine. The state objected to this proposed evidence by Wade because by it appellant sought to impeach the state’s witness Stahl upon an immaterial matter. The court sustained the objection and excluded the testimony. The bill shows, as stated above, that Stahl was an important witness for the state, and gave material and pertinent testimony against appellant. He claims that his object and purpose in seeking the introduction of 'this evidence was to contradict and impeach Stahl; also to show the bias of said witness and the probable interest of said Stahl, and that other men than appellant and other than the husband of said woman were accustomed. to and in the habit of visiting her house at night, and that such other persons might have and probably did take the life of the deceased, and not appellant, and to weaken the cogency, if it had any probative force, of the circumstance and fact of appellant’s presence at the house of the deceased on the night of the homicide and for corroborating his testimony.

While it is always permissible for either side to show the bias and prejudice of any witness against him, yet testimony sought for this purposé must have some probative force to so show. It is never permissible to impeach a witness on immaterial matter. See section 1109, p. 722, White’s Ann. O. C. P., for a collation of some of the cases.

Evidence that any witness associated with lewd women is not admissible for the purpose of impeaching the witness. Holsey v. State, 24 Tex. App. 42, 5 S. W. 523; Arnold v. State, 28 Tex. App. 480, 13 S. W. 774; Drye v. State, 55 S. W. 65; Hudson v. State, 41 Tex. Cr. R. 453, 55 S. W. 492, 96 Am. St. Rep. 789; Reed v. State, 42 Tex. Cr. R. 573, 61 S. W. 925; Neill v. State, 49 Tex. Cr. R. 223, 91 S. W. 791. We cannot see how this testimony could have been admissible for any legitimate purpose in this case, or how it could have tended to show whether some other than appellant killed the deceased. In our opinion the court did not commit reversible error as claimed by either of appellant’s bills.

There being no reversible error, the judgment will be affirmed.