Case Name: Lewis Lewellen v. The State
Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
Jurisdiction: Texas
Decision Date: 1908-11-11
Citations: 54 Tex. Crim. 640
Docket Number: No. 4149
Parties: Lewis Lewellen v. The State.
Judges: 
Reporter: Texas Criminal Reports
Volume: 54
Pages: 640–642

Head Matter:
Lewis Lewellen v. The State.
No. 4149.
Decided November 11, 1908.
1.—Carrying Pistol—Complaint—Pleading.
Where the statutes make two or more distinct acts " connected with the same transaction indictable and the pleader undertakes to charge more than one of the means in the statute, these must he pleaded conjunctively, although they may he stated in the alternative or disjunctively in the statute; and a pleading that the defendant carried on and about his person a pistol, is correct, and there was no error.
3.—Same—Sufficiency of the Evidence.
Where upon trial of unlawfully carrying a pistol, two theories were presented by the evidence, under one of which a verdict of guilty could be sustained, the same will not be disturbed.
Appeal from the County Court of Titus. Tried below before the Hon. Seb F. Caldwell.
Appeal from a conviction of unlawfully carrying a pistol; penalty, a fine of $100.
The opinion states the case.
No brief on file for appellant.
F. J. McCord, Assistant Attorney-General, for the State.

Opinion:
DAVIDSON, Presiding Judge.
Appellant was convicted of unlawfully carrying a pistol on his person, his punishment being assessed at a fine of $100.
The affidavit charged him with carrying on or about his person a pistol. The indictment is not sufficient, in fact is fatally defective. The wording of the complaint seems to follow the wording of the statute, and charges the offense in the alternative instead of conjunctively. It is a well settled rule, in regard to this character of pleading, that where the statute makes two or more distinct acts connected with the same transaction indictable, and the pleader undertakes to charge more than one of the means found in the statute, these must be plead conjunctively, although they may be stated in the alternative or disjunctively in the statute. If not thus plead, the indictment will be fatally defective in matter of substance. In Tompkins v. State, 4 Texas Crim. App., 161, the indictment was quashed, because two separate offenses were joined with the word "or" instead of "and." See Hart v. State, 2 Texas Crim. App., 39; Copping v. State, 7 Texas Crim. App., 61; Roach v. State, 8 Texas Crim. App., 490; Johnson v. State, 9 Texas Crim. App., 249, and Wells v. State, 31 S. W. Rep., 370. In Davis v. State, 33 Texas Crim. App., 637, as well as in Walker v. State, 32 Texas Crim. Rep., 517, the indictment was quashed where it stated the offense disjunctively. In Hart and Wells cases, supra, and! in Burrows v. State, 17 S. W. Rep., 257; Parker v. State, 20 S. W. Rep., 707; Garza v. State, 22 S. W. Rep., 139, and Young v. State, 37 Texas Crim. Rep., 457; 41 S. W. Rep., 885, it was held that a recognizance which recited that appellant stood charged and was convicted of carrying on or about his person a pistol instead of on and about his person, etc., was insufficient and the appeal was dismissed in those cases because of an insufficient recognizance. Where a statute provides that an offense may be committed by one of various methods or by different means, if the pleader seeks to charge more than one of the means or methods stated, it is not permissible to charge in the alternative.
The complaint herein is, therefore, vicious, and must be held insufficient as a predicate for the prosecution. This being the case, the judgment will be reversed and the prosecution ordered dismissed, which is accordingly done
Reversed and dismissed.