Texarkana Court Holds That a Traveler Carrying a Weapon Ceases to Travel When Getting to the Destination before Getting Home

In a trial of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Texarkana Court of Appeals approved jury instructions that the defendant's use of deadly force was reasonable unless they found the defendant provoked the victim or that the defendant was unlawfully carrying a weapon at the time of the assault. The appeals court found that there was sufficient evidence to find (1) that the defendant did some act or used some words which provoked the attack on him, (2) that such act or words were reasonably calculated to provoke the attack, and (3) that the act was done or the words were used for the purpose and with the intent that the defendant would have a pretext for inflicting harm upon the other. Most interesting to me--a scholar of the traveling exception to Texas's carrying a weapon statute--was the court's holding that once the defendant reached his destination and had secured a place to stay, he had ceased to travel, as that to be traveling the defendant would have had to have shown that he was continuing on to another destination. The court also found that sufficient evidence supported the jury's rejection of the defendant's self-defense claim.