Case ID: sw_277/html/0690-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "■ HAWKINS, J. LATTIMORE, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

CLARK v. STATE.
    (No. 9413.)
    (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.
    Nov. 4, 1925.
    Rehearing Denied Dec. 16, 1925.)
    1. Criminal law <§=3741 (5) — Extent of corroboration of accomplice witness is for jury.
    Extent of corroboration of an accomplice witness is a question largely for jury.
    2. Criminal law &wkey;>5ll(l) — Evidence held, sufficient to corroborate testimony of daughter, in prosecution for incest, as accomplice witness.
    In prosecution of defendant for incest with his daughter, evidence held sufficient to corroborate her testimony as an accomplice witness.
    Appeal from Criminal District Court, Harris County; C. W. Robinson, Judge.
    B. B. (Wm.) Clark was convicted of incest, and he appeals.
    Affirmed.
    E. H. Wicks, of Houston, for appellant.
    Sam D. Stinson, State’s Atty., of Austin, and Nat Gentry, Jr., Asst. State’s Atty., of Tyler, for the State.
   ■ HAWKINS, J.

Appellant is under conviction for incest with his 18 year old daughter, Thelma Clark; punishment having been assessed at confinement in the penitentiary for 10 years.

No exceptions were taken to any proceeding during the trial, and no objection was made to the court’s charge.- In the motion for new trial, appellant questions the sufficiency of the evidence to corroborate Thelma Clark, whom the court recognized as an accomplice, and so charged the jury. Her testimony is positive to the incestuous relation maintained by appellant with her. The family occupied a two-room house. The evidence, other than from the daughter, shows that she and her father slept together in one bed and her mother and younger sisters in another bed. The two boys slept upon a pallet upon the floor. One of the boys testified to incriminátive circumstances. Appellant’s wife, though present at the trial, was not called as a witness by appellant. Circumstances testified to by other witnesses are sufficient, we think, . to meet the requirement of the law relative to the corroboration of the accomplice witness. We deem it unnecessary to set out the facts at length.

The judgment is affirmed.

On Motion for Rehearing.

LATTIMORE, J.

Appellant courteously but urgently insists that the evidence is not sufficient in the matter of corroboration of the prosecutrix.' As best we can, we have weighed and sifted the testimony. The girl testified to a number of acts of intercourse with her father. She said that according to her best recollection the acts took place in the daytime. The closest neighbor to appellant, living a few hundred yards away, testified that quite frequently appellant’s wife and all the smaller children would go out to pick cotton, leaving appellant and prose-cutrix at the house. On such occasions the witness swore that after the mother and other children had gone a curtain would be hung over the window where the beds were and that at times ranging from 30 minutes to an hour, afterward appellant and prosecu-trix would come out and together go to some place where they would pick cotton. The undisputed proof shows that appellant and prosecutrix slept together. Human experience must be of use to a jury in determining matters of this kind. Why would the appellant and prosecutrix, when left alone in the house, put a curtain over the window in the bedroom, thus obstructing .the view of the bed? The extent of the corroboration necessary is a question largely for the jury. The girl swore to the fact of frequent intercourse in the daytime. We are not able to believe that the situation testified to by other people did not corroborate her, and the motion for rehearing will be overruled. 
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