Case ID: sw2d_273/html/0075-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "GRAVES, Presiding Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Harley LAWSON, Jr., Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
    No. 27223.
    Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.
    Dec. 1, 1954.
    No attorney on appeal for appéllant.
    Wesley Dice, State’s Atty., Austin, for State.
   GRAVES, Presiding Judge.

Appellant was charged by indictment with the burglary of a house occupied arid controlled by K. O. Ellington for the purpose of committing theft therein. On the trial before a jury he was convicted and awarded a penalty of two years’ confinement in the state penitentiary,

The facts reflect that on the date in question Mr. Ellington was the Superintendent of the Public School in Melvin, McCulloch County,. Texas, and lived about seventy steps therefrom; that during the early morning hours his attention was called to some peculiar noise in the school building. Upon approaching the same, .it became evident that some unauthorized per- . son was in the building, He telephoned the. night watchman, who was also the constable, and he soon appeared on the scene. • They .eventually saw two men in the darkness close to the building. One of . the men was captured by the .officer and found to. be the, appellant. The building had been entered by, breaking a windqw thereof,.and some locks thereiji were broken. An effort of some kind had been made by someone ⅛ .open, the, vault in thp superintendent’s office, but1 who failed to dp so..

Appellant was’found to be wearing coveralls over his khaki suit and having on white gloves on his hands when he was captured. A crowbar, '.pieces l of iron and other-tools-were'present near the safe, thus allowing the jury to infer that they were utilized in .an attempt to open the same.

No bills of exception are found ⅛ the record. The court charged on the law of circumstantial evidence, and the jury was authorized in finding the appellant guilty and giving him the lowest penalty for the offense of burglary.

No error being found in the record, the judgment is affirmed.