The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-12-03
The Value of Confession as Testimony.

/
The danger of relying too implicitly
upon the confession of an accused person
as proof of the ofense with which he is
charged was strongly illustrated a few
/ days since in a case which occurred al
| Hartford, Connecticut. The sacque of q
little girl, pupil in one of the public
schools in Hartford, was missed one day
when the owner started for home al
noon. In the afternoon an inquiry was
instituted by the principal, and after a
! short time an eight year old boy, the son
of respectable parents, said he had taken
! the sacque and hidden it under his coat,
but en- his way home a boy had snatched
the sacque away. This story was corrob-
GRATED by the brother of the confessed
thief, a boy only six years old. The
principal of the school, the boys parents
and the police took the matter in hand,
and the youngster promised to show
where the sacque was hidden, describing
the place; but on the way there he gave
the policeman the slip and ran home. He
was then taken to an engine house, to
the station house, and finally locked up
in dark room, but he refused to say
where the sacque was. He did not whim-
per or cry, but retained the utmost COM
posure; and when asked how ne liked
his place of Imprisonment, said I" it would
do we'll enough" At the approach of
evening he was taken out, and appeared
no more alarmed or disturbed than if he
had been in the parlor of his home. He
was sent to his parents, and policeman,
teacher and parents were puzzled over
this strange case.
The sequel, however, was stranger still.
The day following the boys confession
the sacque was found under circumstan-
ces that showed it to be utterly impOs-
sible for the boy accused or his brother to
have had anything to do with taking it
away or to have seen it. In short it was
shown conclusively that the boys con-
fession and his brothers corrOboration of
it were without any foundation whatever;
and all efforts thus far made TO ascertain
by what motives, if any, they were actu
ated have been unavailing. Both of the
boys have been considered more than Or
dinarily truthful heretofore, which only
adds to the mystery.
The case is not the first of the kind in
the history of the country. There was
a man in Vermont, years ago, who was
accused of murderingFhis neighbor and
who was convicted upon his own con-
fess!on, in which he gave the most minute
details of the murderOus act. He was
sentenced to death, but his life was saved
by the sudden appearance, on the very
dax~fxed for his execution, of the indi-
viduHlesupposed to have been murdered
and hiSsnarrow escape has been of inesti-
mable value to innumerable criminal
lawyers with clients in danger of convic-
tion on circumstantial evidence, who
have used the Vermont case with telling
force upon the jury. There was the case
also, OF bank note engraver in New
York who accused himself of stealing a
bill of the denomination of one thousand
dollars, which was subsequently found
adhering to tine printing press There
was Boston gentleman, too, who ac-
cused himself of deliberately embezzling
large sum of money which, it was after
wards discovered, he had secreted in his
own house in a fit of somnambulism.
1t is not safe, however, because of these
cases, to conclude that confession is no
longer of any value as evidence. The
very fact that such occurrences strike
the popular mind as remarkable, shows
that they are out of the common course,
and that the truthfulness of confessions,
when made by parties charged with crime,
is safe assumption as general rule.