Court Opinion

ID: 9667306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:41:59.948405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:36.733486
License: Public Domain

OPINION
ON APPELLANT’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
ROBERTS, Judge.
Appellant takes issue with that portion of our original opinion which stated that the evidence in this case did reflect that the deceased was taken in the act of adultery, and that therefore the issue of justifiable homicide was not raised. He contends that the issue was raised and that he was entitled to his requested charge on the subject under the paramour statute, Art. 1220, Vernon’s Ann.P.C. We agree.
The record reveals the following:
“Q Okay, now, we get off the phone and what happened ?
“A We talked some more, about Gene and I and about Gene’s family and about him and about him and his father and things like that, and in a little while Gene got up and said, T am going in the kitchen to get some water’, and I said, ‘Okay’ and when he went in the kitchen I looked out the bedroom window and I had no reason to look out the bedroom window, but I saw Buddy [appellant] driving up, and all Gene had on was his undershorts, and I ran in there and said, ‘Gene hurry up and get dressed because Buddy is out there’, and I kept telling him to hurry, and so he went back in the bedroom and put his clothes on and he came back in the kitchen, and then I went back in the bedroom to look out the window again, to see if I could see where Buddy was parked and I couldn’t so I thought he drove on, and I ran back in the kitchen and I said, ‘Don’t, worry, he didn’t stop’, and he said, ‘Yes he did, he is standing right down at the stairs hollering for you’, and I said, ‘What is he saying?’, and Gene said he was saying for me to come down, and then I started listening and he was calling, ‘Brenda, come downstairs, I want to talk to you.’ ”
Brenda Shaw also testified that she and Hintz had just engaged in sexual intercourse, prior to the appellant’s arrival.
Appellant’s testimony, in part, is as follows :
“A Yes sir, I got to wondering whether she was just lying to me again and whether she loved me or what, and I just wanted to talk to her, things just didn’t sound right when I called and I just wanted to talk to her.
“Q You called her again?
“A Yes sir, I called her up and asked her to talk to me, and she said she couldn’t talk to me right then that she would talk to me tomorrow, and I told her, ‘I want to talk to you’, and she said, T can’t talk to you right now’.
“Q Did you get loud and boisterous at that time?
“A No sir.
“Q Did you at that time say anything about killing Gene Hintz ?
“A No sir.
*930“O You didn’t make any mention about it?
“A No sir.
“Q What did you do then ?
"A I finished eating, and I decided to go over there and see if he was going to spend the night there; she had promised me that she would not let him spend the night over there; so I went over there, and I drove by the apartment, and I stopped and I parked out front, and in my tool box I kept my hunting knife that my grandfather had given me, and I put the knife in the small of my back and put my shirt over it and I walked by the apartment and the lights were on so I didn’t go in.
“Q The lights were on ?
“A Yes sir.
“Q What happened then ?
“A I went back to the car and over to the place where I had seen her previously that day and shot a game of pool and waited a while, and I wanted to talk to her, and then I went back by the apartment.
“Q Were the lights on or off ?
“A The lights were off when I got there; I drove in the same way, through the back, underneath the apartment, and drove around and parked out front, where that circle drive would be, on the other side, and I walked back to the apartment, and the lights were off, and I hollered at Brenda, ‘Come talk to me’, ‘Come down and talk to me’, I wanted to talk to her.
jjt ⅜ ⅜ ⅜ ⅜ ⅜
“Q Why did you go there if you were scared of him and you knew he was there ?
“A I wanted to talk to my wife; I didn’t want him spending the night there with my son in that bedroom.”
Upon cross-examination by the State, appellant related:
, “Q And your intent was to come back and talk?
“A Yes sir.
“Q The lights were off this time, why didn’t you go home and call tomorrow?
“A Well, I noticed that Gene’s car was still there.
“Q Well, you just got through saying you didn’t want to go up and talk while he was there ?
“A There would only be one reason for the lights to be out, and that is that they would be in bed.
“Q And that is what you thought ?
“A Yes sir.
“Q Did you think that that was a good time to talk about it ?
“A Well, that was the whole thing though, that I didn’t want Gene spending the night with Brenda.
“Q Isn’t it a fact that you went up there and you saw the lights out and you thought about going up and killing somebody?
“A No sir.”
(Emphasis added)
The question was raised as early as 1885 as to whether, in order to come within the paramour statute, “the husband must discover, find, or see the wife and adulterer in the very act of illicit intercourse or copulation in order to constitute the offense denominated ‘taken in the act of adultery?”’ Price v. State, 18 Tex.App. 474 (1885). The court reasoned well there and stated:
“Such positive proofs of the commission of the crime of adultery are not required, and are rarely attainable. As a crime, adultery itself may be established *931and proven by circumstantial testimony. Should the law hold the husband to a greater or higher degree of proof than itself requires to establish a given fact? It is a late hour of the night, — the parties are found in a corn crib some distance from the house, lying down in the dark. They refuse, at first, to answer when called, then, when the wife answers, she denies that any one is with her, — when deceased gets up he clutches the gun, — defendant finds that the one whose previous conduct and ‘carrying on’ with his wife has excited his suspicions is the one he has thus found in company with his wife. What would any reasonable, sensible man have concluded from these circumstances? In other words, how did the matter reasonably appear to defendant? To him are not these facts ‘confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ ?’ Could it have been otherwise than that he had caught the parties in the act of adultery, either just as they were about to commit, or just after they had in fact committed it ? * * * Does not the law always estimate a man’s right to act upon reasonable appearances? Taking into consideration the res gestae, — taking the acts of the parties and their words coupled with their acts, — and were not the appearances of a character such as would have created the reasonable apprehension and conviction, in a person of ordinary mind, that the parties thus taken were taken in the act of adultery?” (Citation omitted; emphasis added)
See also Gregory v. State, 50 Tex.Cr.R. 73, 94 S.W. 1041 (Tex.Cr.App.1906).
Admittedly, in the present case, if this were a question of the sufficiency of the evidence as to whether the homicide was justified, it would present a very close question. However, the appellant had the right to have the jury determine that issue. This Court has said so many times that whenever evidence is presented, no matter how slight or from what source, which raises an affirmative defense, the accused is entitled to have that charge presented to the jury.
The present appellant has done that. The appellant’s motion for rehearing is granted; the judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.