Case ID: tex-crim_37/html/0301-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "DAVIDSON, Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

B. F. Gilbert v. The State.
    
      No. 1295.
    
    
      Decided March 10th, 1897.
    
    Confession—Corroboration of.
    While it is true that the extra judicial verbal confession of a defendant alone will' not support a judgment of conviction, such a confession will be sufficient to support the conviction when the facts and circumstances tend strongly to show its truth.
    Appeal from the County Court of Erath. Tried below before Hon., T. B. King, County Judge.
    Appeal from a conviction for adultery; penalty, a fine of §100.
    The indictment charged appellant with adultery with one Cordia Gilbert, a married woman. H. C. Gilbert, who was the husband of the woman, testified, that defendant was his second cousin and boarded with him and his wife. He testified to facts and circumstances which aroused his suspicions, and that on mentioning the matter to defendant, defendant confessed to him that he had had intercourse with his wife, Cordia, from six to ten times. He made the same confession to seven other parties, who testified on the trial, and to the witness, I. B. Adams, he said, “he had had carnal intercourse with Cordia Gilbert, and that he was sorry he had not known about it sooner.”
    [No briefs for either party have come to the hands of the Reporter.]
    
      Mann Trice, Assistant Attorney-General, for the State.
   DAVIDSON, Judge.

Appellant was convicted of adultery, and fined in the sum of §100; hence this appeal. A jury was waived, and the cause submitted to the court. The grounds of the motion for a new trial are all based upon the supposed insufficiency of the evidence to support the judgment of the court. The contention of appellant is that the conviction is based upon “the uncorroborated confession” of the defendant. It has been held in this State that the extrajudicial verbal confession of a defendant alone will not support a judgment of conviction. This statement of the law is correct, but it does not apply to this case. The defendant made quite a nmabeir of confessions to various persons as to his adulterous intercourse with his alleged paramour, on various and divers occasions, extending over several months of time, and expressed regret and sorrow at the fact that he had not ascertained earlier that he could have carried on said adulterous intercourse. The facts and circumstances tend strongly to sustain these confessions. We deem it useless to go over the testimony and cull these facts. We think the testimony is sufficient, and the judgment of the court was properly rendered against him. The judgment is affirmed.

Affirmed.