Case ID: tex-ct-app_13/html/0337-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "White, P. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

[Nos. 1357 and 1358.]
    Felipe Flores v. The State. Tomas Bernal v. The State.
    Theft—Indictment—Constitutional Law.—The form for an indictment for theft prescribed by the Act of 1881, known as the “ Common Sense Indictment Bill,” is unconstitutional, and will not charge the offense of theft.
    Appeal from the District Court of Webb. Tried below before the Hon. J. C. Bussell.
    The indictment was joint against both of the appellants, and charged the theft of a horse, the property óf Felix Valdez. They were separately tried, and each, upon conviction, was awarded a term of five years in the penitentiary. Neither -transcript contains a statement of facts.
    No brief for the appellants.
    
      H. Chilton, Assistant Attorney General, for the State.
   White, P. J.

Both these cases were prosecutions for theft of a horse. Each indictment is in the language of the form prescribed in “The Common Sense Indictment Bill” (General Laws Seventeenth Legislature, chap. 57, p. 60).

This particular form has been held to be fatally defective and unconstitutional. (Williams v. The State, 12 Texas Ct. App., 395.) Such being the case, the judgments rendered in the above styled causes will be reversed, and, because there is no valid indictments, these prosecutions must be dismissed.

Reversed and dismissed.

Opinion delivered January 10, 1883.