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33 Tex. 37

Law v. State

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1870

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1870-07-01

Tried below before the Hon. Wesley ■Ogden. The appellant was indicted for the theft of some six hundred dollars, gold and silver coin, the property of Amasa Turner. He was found guiltyby a jury, who assessed his punishment at seven years in the penitentiary. Being refused.a new trial, he appealed. The case was one of circumstantial evidence only. No witness •saw the prisoner take the money.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1870-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1999

4 state decisions

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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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Lindsay, J.

¶1After examining this record carefully, the court is not able to detect any errors which would justify a reversal of the judgment and the award of a new trial to the prisoner. The *38indictment is good and sufficient. No misruling ot the court upon the admission of evidence in the progress of the trial is apparent. The law, upon the facts presented in the statement, is correctly expounded by the court in its charge to the jury, and the only question mooted in this appeal is that of the sufficiency of the evidence before the jury to establish the-guilt of the accused. The evidence was circumstantial. Circumstantial evidence is often as strong and as conclusive upon the understanding as direct and positive evidence. All that the law exacts of a jury in such a case is that their minds should be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the prisoner. They were so admonished . in the charge of the court. There was evidence enough adduced upon the trial to satisfy the judgment of any juror who was not hypercritically sceptical. The positive proof arrayed in ■the defense to explain the circumstances were not of such a character as to destroy, or even to modify, the moral force of the concatenation of facts indicating the prisoner as the guilty agent. The judgment is therefore affirmed.

¶2Affirmed.

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