Bell v. State

Citations

• 18 Tex. Ct. App. 53
• 1885 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 62

Syllabus

<p>1. Informations — Complaint — Practice.— See the statement of the case for a complaint held to be sufficient notwithstanding the omission of words and the erroneous recital that it was sworn to by the accused instead of the injured party, and see the opinion for the reasons for the ruling.</p> <p>3. Aggravated Assault—Definition of “ Child.”— Article 496 of the Penal Code declares an assault aggravated “ when committed by an adult male upon a female or child.” Inasmuch as no statutory definition of the word “child” has been given, that word must, as directed by article 10 of the Penal Code and article 59 of the Code of Procedure, be taken and construed ' in the sense in which it is understood in common language, and in that sense it means a young person as contradistinguished from a person whose age implies settled habits and discretion. As used in said article 496 the word child, when applied to a boy, means a male not above the age of fourteen, and when applied to a girl it means a female not above the age, of twelve; at which periods the sexes respectively attain to the age of puberty.</p> <p>3. Evidence.—In the trial of a school teacher for an aggravated assault and battery upon his pupil, the parties waived a jury and submitted the case to the judge. There was no evidence of the age of the pupil at the time of the assault, but the witnesses concurred in calling him a “boy.” Held, that the evidence suffices on appeal to support the allegation that the injured party was a child, and the conviction is affirmed.</p> <p>4. Practice in the Court of Appeals.— When a misdemeanor case was submitted to the trial judge and a jury waived, and there is a.conflict in the evidence for the State and that for the defense, his findings of fact are tantamount on appeal to the verdict of a jury, inasmuch as he was better circumstanced than this court can be to pass upon the credibility of the witnesses'.</p>