Committing A Crime In Texas? Do You Have To Give Notice?

So usually when you are going to commit a crime, your hope is that you're going to get away with it, right?

Whether it be something like jacking a candy bar from the gas station, all the way up to a violent crime we won't speak into existence.

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Kinda makes it hard to do just that if you need to give notice ahead of time you're about to do something.

Wait, do you have to give 24-hour notice before committing a crime here?

I'll be honest, I've actually heard of this before. Someone told me about it a while back and I thought to myself, well doesn't that defeat the whole purpose? Why commit a crime if you KNOW you're going to get caught for it?

Well, I've given this more thought and decided to dig a little more into it. No, I'm not planning on committing a crime. I'm just curious if that is something you REALLY have to do.

I got my answer pretty quickly.

Granted, this is just an answer from Reddit but it was pretty point blank and confident. I continued to keep digging.

Turns out, they were right. So what is the origin of such a strange rumor?

Back in 1973, Rep. James Kaster from El Paso proposed that a law be passed where a criminal must notify the "target" they would be committing a crime against them within 24 hours. Needless to say, that bill didn't pass.

Gee, I wonder why. How ridiculous of a law would that be? It's not like it would do anything other than land another charge on the person committing the crime. It's not going to stop it from happening. Think about it.

"Defendant is charged with robbery as well as failure to warn victim of crime." Sounds a bit ridiculous to me.

So just know, if you're going to commit a crime in Texas, you do NOT have to let your target know ahead of time. I say just don't commit the crime, seems pretty simple to me.

If you want to read the proposed bill in it's entirety, it's right here. It's a pretty interesting, and hilarious, read.