Case ID: tex-ct-app_8/html/0368-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Winkler, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

P. Flynn v. The State.
    Aggravated Assault and Battery. — To charge an aggravated assault and battery, the indictment or information must specifically allege some one or more of the circumstances of aggravation enumerated in the Penal Code. Averment that the offence was committed with a knife, and that it was an aggravated assault and battery, charges no more than a simple assault and battery, unless it be further alleged that the knife was a deadly weapon, or some other circumstance of aggravation be averred.
    Appeal from the County Court of Fort Bend. Tried below before the Hon. J. C. Williams, County Judge.
    
      
      W. L. Davidson, for the appellant.
    
      Thomas Ball, Assistant Attorney-General, for the State.
   Winkler, J.

The appellant was prosecuted on affidavit and information in the County Court, and was convicted of an aggravated assault and battery upon one David Lynch, and subjected to a fine of $500.

The judgment must be reversed for the reason that the information is defective and insufficient to support the verdict and judgment, in that it does not charge, by appropriate averments, any higher grade of offence than a simple assault and battery. The information, besides averments as to the time and place of the commission of the offence, charges that the defendant “ did, then and there unlawfully and with a certain knife and a certain piece of board or stick of wood, and with his fist, strike, beat, and wound the said David Lynch ; that at said time and place, and in the manner and form aforesaid, the said Patrick Flynn did commit an aggravated assault and battery upon the person of said David Lynch.”

The statement that the defendant committed an aggravated assault and battery, without stating the circumstances of aggravation, will not suffice. The circumstances under which an assault or an assault and battery becomes aggravated, ten in number, are clearly set out in the Penal Code, art. 496, no one of which is set out in the information. It therefore will not support a conviction for an aggravated assault and battery, or any higher grade of offence than a simple assault and battery, the punishment for which is less than that imposed in the present case ; and for this reason the judgment is reversed and the cause remanded. We see no material error in the charge of the court except as to the amount of punishment; as to which the jury should have been confined to that of a simple assault and battery.

Reversed and remanded.