The Texas Penal Code is the principal

criminal code A criminal code or penal code is a document that compiles all, or a significant amount of, a particular jurisdiction's criminal law. Typically a criminal code will contain offences that are recognised in the jurisdiction, penalties that might ...

of the U.S. state of

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

. It was originally enacted in 1856 and underwent substantial revision in 1973, with the passage of the Revised Penal Code, in large part based on the

American Law Institute The American Law Institute (ALI) is a research and advocacy group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars limited to 3,000 elected members and established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law and i ...

Model Penal Code The Model Penal Code (MPC) is a model act designed to stimulate and assist U.S. state legislatures to update and standardize the penal law of the United States.MPC (Foreword). The MPC was a project of the American Law Institute (ALI), and was pu ...

., p. 66Alt URL
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History

The first codification of Texas criminal law was the Texas Penal Code of 1856. Prior to 1856, criminal law in Texas was governed by the

common law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...

, with the exception of a few penal statutes. In 1854, the fifth Legislature passed an act requiring the Governor to appoint a commission to codify the civil and criminal laws of Texas. Only the Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure, both authored by James Willie, were passed by the sixth Legislature and were effective as of February 1, 1857. These came to be referred to as the "Old Codes." The code underwent a major reorganization and reconciliation of existing criminal laws with the adoption of the Texas Penal Code of 1974. According to the Texas Legislative Counsel, the main objectives of the Revised Penal Code were to (1) consolidate, simplify, and clarify the substantive law of crimes; (2) modernize a Penal Code designed for the preindustrialized, rural, and underpopulated Texas society of a century ago; (3) identify and proscribe, with as much precision as possible, all significantly harmful criminal conduct; (4) rationally grade offenses, according to the harm they cause or threaten, and sensibly apportion the sentencing authority between the judiciary and correctional system; (5) codify the general principles of the penal law; and (6) collect in a single code all significant penal law, transferring to more appropriate locations in the statutes regulatory and similar laws that merely employed a penal sanction. Dean

W. Page Keeton Werdner Page Keeton (August 22, 1909 – January 10, 1999) was an attorney and dean of the University of Texas School of Law for a quarter century. Education Keeton was born in McCoy, Atascosa County, Texas, McCoy in Atascosa County, Texas th ...

of the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...

played a key role in drafting, revising, and promoting the Revised Penal Code.

Organization

The Texas Penal Code is organized into titles and chapters. As of 2017, the basic structure is as follows:
Title 1
Introductory Provisions - Declares that all persons are presumed innocent unless

proven Proven is a rural village in the Belgian province of West Flanders, and a "deelgemeente" of the municipality Poperinge. The village has about 1400 inhabitants. The church and parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Chr ...

guilty beyond a

reasonable doubt Beyond (a) reasonable doubt is a legal standard of proof required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems. It is a higher standard of proof than the standard of balance of probabilities (US English: preponderance of ...

. ##Chapter 1. General Provisions ##*Sec. 1.02 states the objectives of the penal code: "to establish a system of prohibitions, penalties, and correctional measures to deal with conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably causes or threatens harm to those individual or public interests for which state protection is appropriate" through deterrence, rehabilitation, and punishment of convicted persons; by giving fair warning of prohibited conduct and consequences of violation; to prescribe penalties proportionate with the seriousness of offenses and take rehabilitation potential into consideration; "to safeguard conduct that is without guilt from condemnation as criminal"; to guide and limit law enforcement; and "to define the scope of state interest in law enforcement against specific offenses and to systematize the exercise of state criminal jurisdiction." ##*Sec. 1.03 provides that conduct not prohibited by law is not a criminal offense. ##*Sec. 1.04 through Sec. 1.09 cover: construction of the code (according to fair import of terms), computation of age, definitions, preemption (prohibiting political subdivisions from enacting or enforcing laws criminalizing same conduct as criminalized in Penal Code), and concurrent jurisdiction for offenses involving state property (granting Attorney General concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute if local prosecutor consents). ##Chapter 2. Burden of Proof ###Sec. 2.01 provides that all persons are presumed innocent unless each element of the offense alleged is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. ###Sec. 2.02 provides that the prosecutor must negate the existence of an exception where an exception is specifically stated in the statute. ###Sec. 2.03 provides that it is not the prosecutor's duty to disprove a defense and that the jury will not be instructed regarding any defense unless evidence is admitted to support the defense, and that if the defense is submitted to a jury, then the jury will be instructed "that a reasonable doubt on the issue requires that the defendant be acquitted." ###Sec. 2.04 provides the standard for affirmative defenses, which is essentially the same as for non-affirmative defenses except that the jury is instructed "that the defendant must prove the affirmative defense by a preponderance of evidence." ###Sec. 2.05 covers presumptions and requires that "if there is sufficient evidence of facts that give rise to the presumption, the issue of the existence of the presumed fact must be submitted to the jury, unless the court is satisfied that the evidence as a whole clearly precludes a finding beyond a reasonable doubt of the presumed fact."
Chapter 3
Multiple Prosecutions ##There is no Chapter 4 or Chapter
Title 2
General Principles of Criminal Responsibility
Chapter 6

Culpability In criminal law, culpability, or being culpable, is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action and inaction. It has been noted that the word ''culpability'' "ordinarily has ...

Generally ##*Covers concepts such as ''

mens rea In criminal law, (; Law Latin for "guilty mind") is the mental state of a defendant who is accused of committing a crime. In common law jurisdictions, most crimes require proof both of ''mens rea'' and '' actus reus'' ("guilty act") before th ...

'' and ''

actus reus In criminal law, ''actus reus'' (; : ''actus rei''), Latin for "guilty act", is one of the elements normally required to prove commission of a crime in common law jurisdictions, the other being ("guilty mind"). In the United States, it is some ...

''.
Chapter 7
Criminal Responsibility for Conduct of Another ##*Covers

complicity Complicity in criminal law refers to the participation in a completed criminal act of an accomplice, a partner in the crime who aids or encourages ( abets) other perpetrators of that crime, and who shared with them an intent to act to complete ...

and

corporate liability Corporate liability, also referred to as liability of legal persons, determines the extent to which a company as a legal person can be held liable for the acts and omissions of the natural persons it employs and, in some legal systems, for those o ...

.
Chapter 8
General Defenses to Criminal Responsibility ##*Covers the

insanity defense The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative Defense (legal), defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to a mental illness, psychiatric disease ...

mistake of fact In criminal law, a mistake of fact may sometimes mean that, while a person has committed the physical element of an offence, because they were labouring under a mistake of fact, they never formed the mental element. This is unlike a mistake ...

, mistake of law,

intoxication Intoxication — or poisoning, especially by an alcoholic or narcotic substance — may refer to: * Substance intoxication: ** Alcohol intoxication ** LSD intoxication ** Toxidrome ** Tobacco intoxication ** Cannabis intoxication ** Cocaine i ...

duress Coercion involves compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner through the use of threats, including threats to use force against that party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to i ...

entrapment Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a crime that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.''Sloane'' (1990) 49 A Crim R 270. See also agent prov ...

, and the responsibility and capacity of minors, including minors with

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

.
Chapter 9
Justification Excluding Criminal Responsibility ##*Covers

self defense Self-defense (self-defence primarily in Commonwealth English) is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in tim ...

defense of others The right of self-defense is the right for people as individuals to commit a crime, violent or non-violent, for the purpose of defending their own life (self-defense) and property, or to defend the lives of others, in certain circumstances. F ...

, public duty,

necessity Necessary or necessity may refer to: Concept of necessity * Need ** An action somebody may feel they must do ** An important task or essential thing to do at a particular time or by a particular moment * Necessary and sufficient condition, in l ...

suicide prevention Suicide prevention is a collection of efforts to reduce the risk of suicide. Suicide is often preventable, and the efforts to prevent it may occur at the individual, relationship, community, and society level. Suicide is a serious public healt ...

defense of property The defence of property is a common method of justification used by defendants who argue that they should not be held liable for any loss and injury that they have caused because they were acting to protect their property. English law Gener ...

, lawful arrest, and

child discipline Child discipline is the methods used to prevent future unwanted behaviour in children. The word ''discipline'' is defined as imparting knowledge and skill, in other words, to teach. In its most general sense, discipline refers to systematic ins ...

. #Title 3. Punishments
Chapter 12
Punishments ##*Prescribes available punishment according to classification of the offense (Class A misdemeanor, Class B misdemeanor, Class C misdemeanor, capital felony, first-degree felony, second-degree felony, state jail felony) along with aggravating circumstances (

repeat Repeat may refer to: * Rerun, a rebroadcast of an episode of a radio or television program * Repeated sequence (DNA), a pattern of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) that occurs in multiple copies throughout the genome ** CRISPR * The smallest rectangle th ...

and

habitual offender A habitual offender, repeat offender, or career criminal is a person convicted of a crime who was previously convicted of other crimes. Various state and jurisdictions may have laws targeting habitual offenders, and specifically providing for enha ...

hate crime Hate crime (also known as bias crime) in criminal law involves a standard offence (such as an assault, murder) with an added element of bias against a victim (individual or group of individuals) because of their physical appearance or perceived ...

elder abuse Elder abuse (also called elder mistreatment, senior abuse, abuse in later life, abuse of older adults, abuse of older women, and abuse of older men) is a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where ...

narcotic The term narcotic (, from ancient Greek ναρκῶ ''narkō'', "I make numb") originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with numbing or paralyzing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates ...

s, and crimes committed in a disaster or evacuated area .g., looting">looting.html" ;"title=".g., looting">.g., looting. #Title 4. Inchoate offense">Inchoate Offenses An inchoate offense, preliminary crime, inchoate crime or incomplete crime is a crime of preparing for or seeking to commit another crime. The most common example of an inchoate offense is "attempt". "Inchoate offense" has been defined as the fol ...

References

Crime in Texas Criminal codes U.S. state criminal legislation Texas law {{Statutory codes of the United States by U.S. state