Edmonson v. State
| Decision Date | 08 December 1888 |
| Parties | EDMONSON <I>v.</I> STATE. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Appeal from circuit court, Yell county; G. S. CUNNINGHAM, Judge.
J. P. Byers, for appellant. Dan. W. Jones, Atty. Gen., for appellee.
The appellant was convicted of burglary. There was no objection or exception of any kind to any ruling of the court at the trial, except in refusing to grant the accused a new trial. The several grounds set up in the motion for a new trial all go to the same question, viz., is the proof sufficient to sustain the verdict? It is not pretended that the offense was not committed. The county treasurer's safe had been blown open, and several thousand dollars of the county funds stolen. The defendant's complicity in the crime was directly testified to by Mike Landers, an avowed accomplice, and also by Landers' wife, who, it was contended, was also an accomplice; but as the statute prohibits a conviction on the testimony of an accomplice unless corroborated by other evidence tending to connect the accused with the offense charged, (Mansf. Dig. § 2259,) and as the corroboration required by the statute cannot be supplied by a second accomplice, the question is whether there was any evidence outside of that of an accomplice leading to the inference that the appellant was implicated in the burglary. If Mrs. Landers was not an accomplice, we need not look beyond her testimony to implicate the appellant. To ascertain her relation to the crime it is not necessary to state the particulars further than as they tend to connect her with a knowledge of it. The prisoner was her husband's step-brother, and was an inmate of their house for several weeks before and after the burglary was committed. He opened the project to Landers to rob the safe. The plan proposed was that they should ascertain when the funds raised by taxation would be deposited in the county's safe, get an expert to aid them, open the safe, and divide the spoils. Landers hesitated, and the prisoner ventured to broach the subject to his wife. She protested against it, wept, and portrayed the disgrace the act would bring upon her and her children; but a promise that she would not tell unless forced to do so, if the burglary was committed, was finally extorted from her. The expert came, the safe was robbed, and her husband received a share of the stolen money. Mrs. Landers made no disclosure of what she knew until her husband was arrested for the offense, and turned state's witness. Whether she knew who was concerned in the commission of the offense, or whether it had been committed at all prior to that time, is not disclosed positively by the bill of exceptions. It is certain that Landers was concerned in the commission of the offense. The prisoner was at his house on the evening of the burglary, and took breakfast there the next morning. These facts, taken in connection with Mrs. Landers' statement that he had informed her a short time before of his intention to commit the deed, had a tendency to show that he was connected with the commission of the offense, and the jury was authorized to take it as sufficient corroboration of Landers' testimony, unless she was also an accomplice.
Whether she was...
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