McKinney v. State

Citations

• 8 Tex. Ct. App. 626

Syllabus

<p>1. Pbactige—Amendment. — The allowance of an amendment of an application for a continuance is a matter purely within the discretion of the trial court, and this court will not revise its action.</p> <p>2. Same. — This court will not revise the action of a lower court in overruling a second application for a continuance, excepting in cases exhibiting plain abuse of judicial discretion.</p> <p>3. A continuance entered and charged up against a party by his consent has the same effect, and entails upon him the same burdens, as though he had presented a written application to the court and obtained a continuance thereon.</p> <p>i. Same. — Either the State or a defendant may obtain a continuance or a postponement of the trial, when it is made to appear to the satisfaction of the court that, after the commencement of the trial, the applicant is so taken by surprise by some unexpected occurrence, which by reasonable diligence he could not have anticipated, that a fair trial cannot be bad. An application of this character is not precluded by the previous overruling of an ordinary application.</p> <p>6. Same.—An irregularity committed in the court below in the formation of a petit jury will not be revised in this court when it appears that the defendant did not exhaust his peremptory challenges.</p> <p>6. Evidence. ■— When the scientei' or quo anima is a constituent of an offence, and necessary to be proved, it is competent to introduce testimony of acts, conduct, or declarations of the accused which tend to establish the knowledge or intent, though they in themselves constitute in laxv distinct crimes, and are apparently collateral and foreign to the main issue, and may have occurred either prior or subsequent to the act for which the accused is being tried.</p> <p>7. Same. — On trials for murder, former grudges, former quarrels, and antecedent menaces may always be shown, to prove motive and the prisoner’s malice against the deceased.</p> <p>8. Same—Practice. — In laying