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294 S.W.2d 112

Alcorta v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · decided 1956-05-30

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1956-05-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 1985

11 state decisions

601956196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1On Motion, for Rehearing

MORRISON, Presiding Judge.

¶2The pictures, which form the basis for this appeal, have been described as ghastly and horrible. In a sense this is true of any picture of the body upon which acts of violence have been committed. The body portrayed in these pictures had been cleaned and lay prone on a hospital bed. They were not taken at the scene of the crime, and no blood or weapons were visible. We concluded originally that an issue had been made by the appellant’s testimony as to the number of wounds he had inflicted upon the body of the deceased, together with his testimony about Castilleja having inflicted an injury to her head. To the writer it is immaterial that this issue was raised by cross-examination. It was raised by the defendant’s testimony.

¶3■Now to return to a description of the pictures. Our opinion herein is not to be construed as necessarily authorizing the introduction of pictures taken at the scene of the crime lying in pools of blood, but we do hold here that pictures such as these which tend. to solve a disputed issue are admissible, especially when taken against the least possible inflammatory background.

¶4■ Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.

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