666 S.W.2d 147 (1959)
James G. McCREARY, Appellant, v. STATE of Texas, Appellee.
No. 81187.
IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS, TEXAS.
November 16, 1959.
Herman Gass, Gass & Gladwell, Freiburg, for appellant.
Jim Bormann, Dist. Atty.; Harlan C. Fish, Asst. Dist. Atty., Freiburg; and Leon Fuller, State’s Atty., Austin, for the State.
WILKINSON, C.J., writing.
This appeal is taken from a jury verdict convicting the appellant, James Grant McCreary, of fourteen counts of knowingly or intentionally molesting a corpse in violation of Texas Penal Code § 299.48; the punishment, twenty-eight years’ commitment to the custody of the Texas Prison System.
A Grand Jury convened by the State, by and through the District Attorney, in the 24th District Court of Gillespie County, Texas, issued an indictment against McCreary on August 29, 1957, originally charging him with fifteen counts of knowingly or intentionally molesting a corpse in violation of Texas Penal Code § 299.48; a trial resulting in the jury verdict currently before the Court was had in the 58th District Court of Gillespie County, Texas, in June 1958; an appeal of that verdict was taken to the Third Court of Appeals, contending that the jury’s verdict was clearly contrary to the law of insanity in this state; the Third Court of Appeals upheld the conviction. We affirm.
The following facts were established at trial. That McCreary was at all times relevant to the case at bar the caretaker for the Freiburg City Cemetery, all monies constituting his salary and benefits being paid out of the public fisc. That McCreary was at all times relevant to the case at bar charged with the upkeep and general maintenance of the cemetery, including seeing after the condition of all gravestones therein and the surrounding grounds. That beginning in February 1957, McCreary did develop certain insane delusions about a proficiency in necromancy, including and especially the ability to communicate with the corpses entrusted to his custody and safekeeping after the completion of certain occult rites offensive to the peace and dignity of the State. That beginning in February 1957, McCreary began to disinter and consort with the corpses entrusted to his custody and safekeeping. That beginning in March 1957, McCreary developed a proper system for discreetly disinterring and dressing up the corpses entrusted to his custody and safekeeping and by which he would, in the small hours of night, position them around a dinner table in his live-in quarters and host, in his own words, “real swell parties” that involved feeding, dancing, and engaging in extensive conversation with said corpses.
That on April 21, 1957, Frank T. Doering, the State’s principal witness, did pass by the Freiburg City Cemetery at approximately 2:45 A.M. and overhear what he described to the jury as “obscene laughter” emanating from the McCreary’s live-in quarters. That Doering did report said laughter the next morning to certain Freiburg County Sheriff’s Deputies who, for reasons unclear to the Court, did not investigate his report. That in May 1957, Doering did begin to make a habit of walking by the cemetery during the obscure hours of night in order to investigate the laughter, having developed suspicions that McCreary, whose general reputation in Freiburg was that of an odd and unnerving character, was engaging in untoward behavior with the corpses entrusted to his custody and safekeeping. That in late May 1957, McCreary did spot Doering peering into the graveyard from the top of a nearby hill as McCreary approached a grave and that McCreary, by Doering’s testimony, appeared to preparing to disinter a corpse, lamp and shovel in hand. That McCreary did then begin to yell obscenities at Doering, mixing said obscenities with queries about who he was and what he wanted. That McCreary did then get into his truck and begin to drive through and around Freiburg, armed with a shotgun, several shells, and a shovel, apparently with the intent to kill, maim, or intimidate the man who had spotted him in the act of his undertaking his sordid work. That in early June 1957, McCreary did then become afflicted with paranoid delusions about a conspiracy between the Gillespie County Sheriff’s Office and the Freiburg Lutheran Church to “perturb the exercise of my First Amendment rights to observe whatever religion I damn well please.”
That in June 1957, McCreary’s activities with the corpses began to intensify, and that McCreary set about the composition of several lengthy manuscripts the principal object of which was to describe, properly systematize, and justify the practice of ritual necromancy, seemingly with the purpose of providing a novel intellectual basis for how and why the living should wish to communicate and consort with the dead; and that doing so, even, is more noble a pursuit than “confining one’s self within the limits stipulated by the Christian authorities.” That in June and July of 1957, McCreary began to acquire any and all books having anything to do with necromancy, occult practice, or theories of the afterlife, most of which he appears to have procured by mail order and day-time trips to libraries in nearby Austin, Texas. That by late July 1957, McCreary had written just under one thousand pages worth of amateur scholarship and commentary on the practice of necromancy, demonstrating as keen an interest in historical practice as in the methods and challenges of contemporary necromantic practice. That by early August 1957, McCreary began to copulate with the corpses entrusted to his custody and safekeeping, describing the practice as “many a time more profound than just getting your rocks off with a girl,” and that “they have much more to teach us than mortal men could ever hope to.”
That throughout the summer of 1957, Doering would observe the cemetery from discreet nearby locations during the obscure hours of night, recording his observations in a notebook and documenting the particular grave McCreary would desecrate as well as the exact time of said desecration. That Doering ultimately witnessed and recorded up to thirteen separate instances of McCreary intentionally molesting corpses, typically by opening coffins and lying with them in their graves or disinterring them completely before carrying them back to McCreary’s live-in quarters, at which point McCreary would dress, feed, converse, and copulate with said corpses.
That in mid August 1957, Doering, the Grand Magi of the Freiburg Klavern, the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, convened a meeting of local Klansmen and shared with them his findings and conclusions, including and especially the conclusion that McCreary was engaged in what he termed “witchcraft.” That Tillman Mueller, the Exalted Cyclops of the Freiburg Klavern, then held a vote on a resolution declaring that “we must take it upon ourselves to sequester and ultimately vanquish this vile witch,” specifically by effecting a citizen’s arrest under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 14.01, and delivering McCreary to the Gillespie County Sheriff’s Office. That Doering, Mueller, and a number of anonymous Klansmen did then lie in wait on the night of August 19, 1957, during which they observed McCreary disinter a body and transport said body by way of a covered wheelbarrow back to his live-in quarters. That the Klansmen then ventured on to the cemetery and forced themselves into the live-in quarters, at which time they observed McCreary, naked, attempting to unlock the closet in which he kept his shotgun. That the Klansmen did then subdue and sequester McCreary before promptly delivering him to law enforcement at 6:50 A.M. on August 20, 1957, no longer in their Klan attire; and that Mueller and Doering did then deliver statements to the police and offer themselves as witnesses to the crime for which the citizen’s arrest was effected.
The foregoing are the facts upon which this conviction rests. The State sought and received an indictment in late August 1957, charging McCreary with fifteen counts of knowingly or intentionally molesting a corpse in violation of Texas Penal Code § 299.48. The State dismissed one of these charges during pretrial proceedings and instead pressed ahead for trial on the fourteen documented instances of molestation for which it had direct witness testimony. McCreary was offered two plea bargains and rejected both. McCreary retained counsel the week before trial, apparently paid for by his mother, and proved to be difficult and obstinate litigant, prone to outbursts that would delay proceedings for up to an hour. At several points he declared that he would murder his attorney “and go a dancin’ with the body” if counsel did not raise a First Amendment defense claiming that he was being unlawfully persecuted for the practice of his religion. Defense counsel, understandably, did not acquiesce to McCreary’s demands. McCreary also raised a number of procedural objections to his citizen’s arrest, all of which were overruled and are not complained of to review on this appeal.
At trial, McCreary did not contest the underlying facts and instead pled a purely legal defense, specifically by invoking the common law rule that a criminal defendant lacks the mens rea necessary to knowingly or intentionally commit a crime when they are possessed with certain insane delusions or a severe mental disease that prevents them from appreciating the wrongfulness, morbidity, or nature and consequences of their conduct. Texas Penal Code § 299.48, the statute under which McCreary was charged, provides that “[a]ny person who, without authority of law, shall knowingly or intentionally molest any human corpse shall be punished by a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed two years, or by both such fine and imprisonment.” Molest in this context is taken to mean “to bother, disturb, or make non-consensual sexual contact with.”
The trial court submitted instructions to the jury counseling them that, should they find that the State had carried its own burden to establish McCreary’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, it would then be incumbent upon McCreary to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he was afflicted by a severe mental disease or defect of reason such that he was incapable of forming the requisite intent of the crime charged, i.e., that he was incapable of comprehending that his activity amounted to “molesting” the corpses rather than simply “conversing or consorting” with said corpses, including engaging in consensual sexual relations with them; and, that if McCreary failed to carry this burden, specifically by failing to rebut the State’s evidence regarding McCreary’s manuscripts and their engagement with the proposition that consorting with corpses was indeed wrong and could amount to “molestation,” that the jury was required to reject this defense.
The jury deliberated for under an hour and returned guilty verdicts on all fourteen counts. McCreary appealed, contending that the jury’s verdict was clearly contrary to law given the “overwhelming amount of evidence tending to prove that [he] could not appreciate, due a severe defect of reason, that he was ‘molesting,’ rather than simply interacting with, the corpses.” The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that there was no reason to disturb the jury’s conclusion that McCreary appeared to understand perfectly well the nature and consequences, and ultimately the wrongfulness, of his actions. McCreary v. State, 22 Tex.App. 101 (1958). We agree.
At common law, defendants answering criminal charges the underlying statutes for which require a certain degree of intent (here, “knowing” or “intentional” molestation) may assert in their defense that the harboring of certain insane delusions rendered them incapable of forming the requisite degree of intent, for the Defendant so answering never did contemplate or hold as his conscious object the accomplishment of the criminal objective or conduct proscribed by the statute. A review of the authorities affirms that Texas follows the rule of defense-by-insanity announced by M’Naghten’s Case 1843 10 C & F 200. Last term, we approvingly cited the following formulation: “in order to establish a defense on the ground of insanity it must be proved ‘that at the time of committing the act the party accused was laboring under such defect of reason, from disease of mind, as not to know the nature and quality and consequence of the act he was doing; or if he did know, that he did not know he was doing wrong, that is, that he did not know the difference between the right and the wrong as to the particular act charged against him’ and that ‘… the mind must have been so dethroned of reason as to deprive the person accused of a knowledge of the nature and quality and consequences of the particular act done and of the right and wrong of the particular act done.’” Freeman v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 317 S.W.2d 726, 734 (citing McClure v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 672 S.W.4d 214, 222).
At trial, the State adduced voluminous amounts of evidence establishing that McCreary appreciated perfectly well the nature and character of his actions, as his manuscripts proceed from the general premise that consorting with corpses is, in fact, wrong, and could be tantamount to “molestation.” The manuscripts themselves represent a long-winded and, we submit, unpersuasive attempt to critically examine and rebut that proposition. If anything, McCreary’s writings demonstrate a rather intellectually robust understanding of why consorting with corpses is or might be a sanctionable, sordid activity deserving of the censure of civilized men. We see no reason to dispute, much less reverse, the Court of Appeals’ decision that the jury’s interpretation of the evidence was not clearly contrary to the law of insanity in this state. Moreover, the fact that McCreary may have disagreed that his actions amounted to “molestation” corpses is immaterial, for disagreement with the law is no defense, nor is ignorance of it, and the statute applies by its plain language to McCreary’s conduct in this case. Simpson v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 664 S.W.2d 291, 301.
In their briefing before the Court, counsel for McCreary raised, for the first time, the issue of certain comments made by the trial court during post-conviction proceedings; namely, an inadvertent and admittedly ill-advised comment by Judge Wilson that McCreary’s conduct “should appall the consciences of sane Christian men.” McCreary asserts that this comment “provides a window into the prejudices of the convicting court” and therefore impugns the constitutional integrity of any verdict rendered thereby, specifically by way of an Establishment Clause violation. Said another way, “Judge Wilson’s comment was tantamount to an unlawful establishment of religion in what are to be secular proceedings.” No objection, however, was made at the time, and it is well established that we are without jurisdiction to address issues that are raised for the first time on appeal. Lee v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 678 S.W.3d 823. We take care to note, however, that McCreary is not without recourse, for he may undertake a collateral attack on any constitutional infirmities in the proceedings that produced his conviction by way of an application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus; provided, of course, that he meets the applicable procedural minimums, which is all to say nothing of the rigorous substantive requirements that await any such challenges.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
Be it so ordered.
— Nick Mace is a writer, mediocre lawyer, and all-around lowlife based in the Lone Star State, around which he drifts, at random, at all times of the year. His first novel Salomon’s Garden is forthcoming on Farthest Heaven in late 2026. You can find him on twitter @hostileUAVabove and hit him at his email nickmace@proton.me.