Hughes v. State

OPINION ON STATE’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

CLINTON, Judge.

Indicted for murder, appellant was convicted by a jury of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter and his punishment assessed at twenty years confinement and a fine of $10,000.00. On appeal the Tyler Court of Appeals reversed appellant’s conviction, holding that the trial court erred in charging, as part of its instruction to the jury on the law of defense of third parties, both in the abstract and in application to the facts of the case, that before appellant was entitled to use deadly force in defense of a third person…