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98 Miss. 723

Bolden v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1910

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1910-10-15

Hon. Jno. H. Mitchell, Judge. Arch Bolden was convicted of arson and appeals. The facts are fully stated in.the opinion of the court. The fourth assignment of error is as follows: “The court erred in admitting the confession of defendant, testified to by the witness Bunk Ruff, because the corpus delicti had not previously been proven.” Let iis first determine what constitutes the corpus delicti in a case of arson.

Relies on Spears v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1910-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently June 2005

4 state decisions

101910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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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Smith, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court:

¶2Appellant was convicted in the court below of the crime of arson, and sentenced to the penitentiary for the term of his natural life.

¶3The burning of the house was abundantly proven. The only evidence introduced, other than the alleged confession of appellant, which tended to show that the burning was caused by a criminal agency, was that the burning occurred at night, that the fire originated on- the outside of the house, and that shortly after the house had burned tracks which resembled those of appellant, who lived several miles from the scene, were discovered about seventy-five yards from the place where the building had stood. A criminal agency may be established by circumstances, but this evidence is wholly insufficient to do so. Spears v. State, 92 Miss. 613, 46 South. 166, 16 L. R. A. (N. S.) 285.

¶4The corpus delicti, therefore, not having been proven by evidence other than the alleged confession of appellant, the judgment of the court below is reversed and the cause remanded.'

¶5Reversed and remanded.

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