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41 Tex. 404

State v. Shadle

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1874

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1874-07-01

Tried below before the Hon. Charles Soward. The indictment charged that Samuel Shadle took from the possession of T. C. Moore “one horse, one saddle, and one bridle, &c., being then the property of the said T. C. Moore, without the consent of the said T. C. Moore.” The exceptions to the indictment were sustained. The opinion sufficiently indicates their character.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1874-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently March 1990

3 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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Devine, Associate Justice.

¶1Appellee was indicted in the District Court of Parker county, at the October term, 1872, under the act of May, 1864, (Pas. Dig., art, 2400,) and charged with having taken, with force and arms, and without lawful authority, out of the possession of T. C. Moore, a horse, saddle, and bridle, the property of said Moore.

¶2Defendant excepted to the indictment. The court below sustained the exception and quashed the indictment, from which judgment the State has appealed.

¶3We are sufficiently informed, from the history of the time when this law was passed, of the objects in view by those who enacted it. The glaring and numerous abuses growing out of the impressment of property for public use during the late war called this act into existence.

¶4These abuses ceased with the return of peace; and we cannot hold it to have been the intention of the Legislature that a mere act of trespass should, under an entirely different condition of affairs, public and private, be- punished as a felony.

¶5The vague and general terms of the law leaVes it liable to some of the exceptions raised on behalf of the accused. *406It also embraces more than one object, and is repugnant to the provisions of the Constitution on this subject. (Art. VII, sec. 24.)

¶6There was no error in sustaining the exceptions.

¶7The judgment is affirmed.

¶8Affirmed.

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