Johnson v. State

<p>T. It was not error for the court, in charging the jury, to instruct them to look at the case in two aspects: first, leaving out of view the evidence given by accomplices, to inquire whether there was enough proved otherwise to warrant them in finding a verdict of guilty;, and secondly, to consider the case upon all the evidence, the accomplice-evidence included. The charge was not prejudicial to the accused, because the accomplice-evidence bore against him, none of it in his favor; and the court charged that no conviction could be had upon it unless it was corroborated.</p> <p>2. Generally the time when the alleged offence was committed, so that it be not barred by the statute of limitations, is immaterial; but when the evidence renders it material relatively to other facts in evidence, the jury may and should recognize its materiality. A charge to this effect, though- apparently superfluous, was not erroneous.</p> <p>3. It is not for the jury to pass upon the conduct either of the judge or of the solicitor-general in conducting a criminal case.</p> <p>4. Where there was no evidence connecting the accused with the alleged burglary except the testimony of two witnesses who admitted that they were accomplices in the burglary, and the State sought to corroborate the accomplices by showing that a garment found on the person of the accused recently after the commission of the offence was a part of the goods taken from the broken building by the burglars, evidence which fails to identify the garment ' as such, with reasonable certainty, is insufficient corroboration, the owner of the goods having testified as a witness in behalf of the State, and the record showing no reason or explanation why he failed to testify to the identity or to a description by which the identity might appear. In consequence of this failure to cor- ' robórate the accomplices, the evidence was insufficient to warrant the verdict, and it was error not to grant a new trial.</p>