Houston v. State

The Constitution of 1845, Sec. 12 of Art. I thereof, provides that “The right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.” The same provision was carried into and preserved in the subsequent revisions of the Constitution, including that of 1876 (our present Constitution), where it appears as Art. 1, Sec. 15 thereof.

To strengthen and fortify that constitutional provision and to guard against any waiver or destruction of or disobedience to the right of trial by jury, the legislature of this state, when it came to promulgate our first or original code, declared by Art. 26 thereof that the right of…