Thomas v. State

My Brethren have signified approval of an opinion reversing the conviction of this appellant for keeping a gambling house, the error of which opinion seems to the writer to be clear and plain. I regret dissent, — but the vice of gambling is so ruinous and the denunciations of same so plain in all our common law and statutory utterances, and the mistake of this reversal so serious, that I am impelled to write my views at length.

In 1907 our Legislature, stirred by the murder of a great county attorney at Fort Worth while raiding a gambling house, enacted Art. 625, P. C., aimed at the evil of…