2 Ga. App. 654 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1907
The defendant, John McAllister, was indicted and-convicted for the offense of adultery and fornication, and excepts to the overruling of his motion for a new trial. The only question presented by the record is whether the verdict is contrary to law, in that the evidence is insufficient to support it. This court is especially reluctant to interfere with the verdict of a jury, and for that reason we have carefully scrutinized the record to ascertain if in any view of the case the verdict can be supported by law. The evidence for the State, in brief, was that one witness saw the defendant running after the married woman with whom the intercourse is alleged to have taken place, and slapping her on the rump. Another witness, at another time, saw the defendant kiss the female in question. The State then produced the following statement, made by the defendant to another witness: “The defendant told me that he did it to [the woman in question] whenever he wanted to do it.” Another witness, detailing this same conversation, said that the defendant said that he did it to her one time. This was all the evidence in behalf of the State. The defendant stated that he had never had intercourse with the female in question; and she testified to the same effect.
A confession corroborated will authorize conviction of a criminal offense; the amount of corroboration being solely for the jury. Clark, in his work on Criminal Procedure, p. 532, lays the rule down thus: “An extra-judicial confession, in order to warrant a
The error of the trial judge in this case grew out of his failure to recognize the distinction between a.confession incomplete and a plenary confession. We think that the circumstance that a gentleman boarder was seen familiarly slapping the rump of his landlady, who was a married woman, and the further circumstance that he was seen holding her by the chin and kissing her, would afford strong corroborative testimony of a plenary and specific confession of sexual intercourse. But the witnesses for the State, as to the confession, did not detail a statement by the defendant which would authorize a conviction, even if the law permitted convictions by confessions uncorroborated. From this statement, denominated a confession, it does not appear that the intercourse took place in Bartow county, nor that it was within two years prior to the finding of the indictment; nor is there any circumstance to connect it with the facts upon which the State relied for corroboration. We think, therefore, that the verdict, for lack of evidence, is contrary to law, and that a new trial ought have been granted.
Judgment reversed.