Cooper v. State

CHRISTIAN, Judge.

The offense is murder, the punishment confinement in the penitentiary for twenty years.

The issue of guilt was sharply contested. The state offered testimony in support of its theory that appellant had threatened to kill Grover Durham, the deceased, and that he and his companion, Martin Petty, lay in wait for deceased at night and killed him by stabbing him with a knife. Appellant offered testimony supporting his theory that he and deceased were engaged in a fist fight and that when deceased struck him with some brass knucks, he, appellant, believing that his life was in…