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10 Ala. App. 239

Brandes v. State

Alabama Court of Appeals

Decided May 14, 1913

Alabama Court of Appeals · decided 1913-05-14

Heard before Hon. William E. Fort. Louis Brandes was convicted of keeping a gaming table, and he appeals.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1913-05-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently November 1957

3 state decisions

1019131920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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WALKER, P. J.

¶1The court did not err in overruling the motion made by the defendant to exclude the evidence introduced by the state. That evidence tended to prove acts and admissions of the defendant Avhich furnished support for the inference that, Avithin the period covered by the indictment, he had committed the offense therein charged. The contention that the evidence had no such tendency is strikingly Avitkout merit.

¶2No error Avas committed by the court in its statement to the jury that “the fact that a defendant does not testify cannot be used or considered adversely to him or in his favor.” This statement Avas a part of an admonition to the jury not to consider the defendant’s failure to testify in the case, but to consider only the evidence Avkicli had been submitted to them. There Avas no impropriety in the court’s thus cautioning the jury. The satutory prohibition of a defendant’s failure to testify in the trial of a criminal charge against him being made “the subject of comment by counsel” (Code, § 7894) does not make it error for the court to caution the jury not to draw, any inference from the defendant’s failure to offer himself as a witness.

¶3There is no error in the record.

¶4Affirmed.

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