Case ID: sw_262/html/0077-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "LATTIMORE, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

SMITH v. STATE.
    (No. 7956.)
    (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.
    May 14, 1924.)
    Criminal law <s=j556 — State bound by exculpatory statement, unless disproved.
    Where state introduced defendant’s written statement which was exculpatory, the state was bound thereby, in absence of testimony disproving such statement.
    Appeal from District Court, Hamilton County; J. R. McClellan, Judge.
    Jobn Smith was convicted of assault with intent to rape, and he appeals.
    Reversed and remanded.
    H. E. Chesley, A. R. Eidson, and A. E. Nabors, all of Hamilton, for appellant.
    Tom Garrard, State’s Atty., and Grover C. Morris, Asst. State’s Atty., both of Austin, for the State.
   LATTIMORE, J.

Appellant was convicted in the district court of Hamilton county of assault with intent to rape, and his punishment fixed at two years in the penitentiary.

This is a companion ease to Huffman v. State (Tex. Cr. App. No. 7955) 262 S. W. 76, opinion this day handed down,.and rests upon similar facts and (reasoning. A written statement of the appellant, who did not testify. was introduced in evidence by the state as having been made tbe day following tbe occurrence in which he affirmed, his entire lack of knowledge of or acquaintance with prosecutrix; that he was told by Velma Huffman that she was a girl with whom Willingham could' have carnal connection; that upon this information they went in a car to the Patterson home and Velma Huffman brought her out and they got in the car, he and the Huffman girl being on tbe front seat and Evelyn Patterson and Will-ingham on tbe back seat; that tbe only thing that be heard or knew of as occurring on tbe back seat between Evelyn Patterson and Willingham up to tbe point where tbe Patterson girl jumped from tbe car, was that Willingham asked him to increase tbe speed of tbe car. The state’s, case otherwise was almost exactly similar to that in the Huffman Case, supra. We have been unable to discover anything in the record showing the falsity of this exculpatory statement put in evidence by the state, which entirely negatives the fact of guilt as a principal, and have concluded that under the authorities cited in the Huffman Case, supra, we are compelled to direct a reversal of this case; and it is so ordered. 
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