Hart, Jr. v. State

GRAVES, Judge.

Appellant, a negro, was convicted of rape upon Mrs. Bertha Bednar, a white woman thirty-two years of age, and by the jury awarded the death penalty, hence this appeal.

Mrs. Bednar was the mother of three children; she lived in Dallas, and upon the occasion in question, the night of July 27, 1941, after her children had gone to bed, she, her husband and a friend of the husband’s went to a restaurant and there remained until about 2 o’clock A. M., talking and listening to the music, the men drinking beer. Upon a return to her home her husband, who had imbibed rather freely, decided…