Mary Helen Halliburton, Appellant v. the State of Texas, Appellee

Summary

The Court affirmed the murder conviction, holding that evidence of a later shooting of another man was admissible to rebut the appellant's self‑defense claim because it tended to disprove that explanation. The majority reasoned that relevance to a contested defensive theory suffices, while two dissenting judges argued that such extraneous evidence should be excluded absent substantial similarity and that the majority's rule infringes constitutional rights.