Stuckey v. State

Citations

• 7 Tex. Ct. App. 174

Syllabus

<p>Charge or the Court. — The law of Texas is and has ever been sedulously careful to establish and preserve well-defined boundaries between the functions of the judge and those of the jury, and to guard the province of each against intrusion by the other. It requires the judge to deliver to the jury a written charge distinctly setting forth the “law applicable to the case,” but strictly enjoins him from therein discussing the facts, weighing the evidence, summing up the testimony, or using any argument calculated to arouse the sympathy or passion of the jury. These injunctions exact from the judge, not merely that he refrain from positive expressions of the prohibited kinds, but that he avoid even the appearance of an intimation or the suggestion of the remotest inference from the evidence or the facts of the case on trial. Disregard of the law in these respects becomes especially material and prejudicial when, as in the present case, there was evidence which, if credited by the jury, tended to countervail the inculpatory evidence adduced by the State. See the opinion in extenso, and the application of these principles in this case.</p>