Case Name: Ex Parte William Cooper
Court: Supreme Court of Texas
Jurisdiction: Texas
Decision Date: 1868-04
Citations: 31 Tex. 185
Docket Number: 
Parties: Ex Parte William Cooper.
Judges: 
Reporter: Texas Reports
Volume: 31
Pages: 185–186

Head Matter:
Ex Parte William Cooper.
To justify a denial of bail there must be that evidence of deliberate malice, or those circumstances which prove murder in the first degree. (Paschal’s Dig., Art. 2267, Note 672.)
Appeal from Denton: The case was tried before Hon. Hardin Hart, one of the district judges.
The applicant having been committed-by a justice of the peace, he renewed the application for bail before the district court. Bail having been refused, he appealed to the Supreme Court. To make the precedent of any value the facts should be given.
The step-mother of Martha Wirt, sister of the deceased, and Martha got into a squabble about the ownership of a piece of cloth, and the right of Martha to make a pair of pantaloons out of it for deceased. From words the women came to a scuffle; the daughter calling for'her brother, the deceased,'and the old lady for her sons. About the beginning of the scuffle the step-mother and daughter disagreed. When the young men came in there seemed to be some controversy about who made the cloth, the old lady alleging that she spun and colored it, and the step-daughter that she wove it.
There was some discrepancy as to the character of the scuffle among the young men. The fight was the two Coopers against Wirt. John Cooper fired twice during the scuffle, both charges taking effect, and killing John Wirt almost immediately. Wirt was unarmed, and there was no evidence that William Cooper was armed or did anything except his part in the scuffle, in which, according to his mother, he got the worst of it. All in all, it was a general family fracas, about which there were no witnesses except the two exasperated women who commenced it. There seemed to have been no good feeling between John Wirt and John Cooper. There was no proof of ill-blood between deceased and William Cooper.
hlo briefs have been furnished to the Reporter.

Opinion:
Caldwell, J.
—The applicant is charged with murder, and having been denied bail by the justice, sitting as a court of inquiry, sued out his writ of habeas corpus, before the district court of Denton county. The district court took the same view as the justice, denied bail, and thus the case is before the court on appeal.
The record does not disclose that sedate mind and deliberate preconceived purpose which indicate express malice; nor do we discover those circumstances which point with unerring certainty to malice express.
The defendant is therefore entitled to bail, which is fixed at the sum of $10,000. It is ordered that the officer in whose custody the defendant may he shall take the required bail bo.nd.
Ordered accordingly.