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142 Ala. 1

Johnson v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1904

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1904-11-15

Tried before the Hon. Daniel A. Greene. The appellant in this case, W. E. Johnson, was indicted, tried and convicted for obtaining money under false pretenses.

Relies on Matthews v. State · Smith v. State · Stringer v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1904-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently September 1979

9 state decisions

3019041910192019301940195019601970decided

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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McCLELLAN, C. j.

¶1The court did not err in overruling the demurrer ti> the first count of the indictment. It is in the Code form. — Code 1896, § 4923, Form 48, Criminal Code, p. 330.

¶2The case being tried on the first count, a primal ingredient of the offense was the falsity of the alleged representations whereby defendant obtained money from Brinkmeyer. Without proof of such falsity the corpus delicti was not shown. The only evidence offered to show that the representations were false was the confession of the defendant to that-effect. In the absence of independent- evidence in that connection this confession was not admissible, and should have-been excluded on defendant’s objection based upon the ground that the corpus delicti had not been proved; and the general charge should have been given for the defendant. “A confession not corroborated by independent evidence of the corpus delicti is not sufficient to support a conviction of felony.” Matthews v. State, 55 Ala. 187; Smith v. State, 133 Ala. 145; Stringer v. State, 135 Ala. 60.

¶3Reversed and remanded.

Tyson, Simpson and Anderson, J. J., concurring.
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