Court Opinion

ID: 9767814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:28:13.59388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:33.240346
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
MORRISON, Judge.
Appellant has favored us with a scholarly brief in which he again complains of the trial court’s failure to charge on circumstantial evidence and the alleged failure of the state to prove the corpus delicti. We are much impressed with the strength of his argument but are confronted at the outset with the complaint upon which the prosecution was had, signed by Leo Gos-sett, and by his testimony. The complaint names the injured party. Gossett testified that he made an investigation at the scene of the accident and that at the clinic he saw “the bodies of three people who had been killed in the accident”; that he learned their identity at about 8:30, and then went straightway to the county attorney’s office where he signed the complaint. Further, the witness Keegan testified that “he checked over all the patients who were involved in the accident” and after examining three women, he sent them to the hospital. He testified that he later took the bodies of the three women from the clinic to the morgue where the body of the deceased was identified.
*355We find no objection to any of this testimony. We feel that with this testimony the state made out its case as to the identity of the deceased at the scene of the wreck, at least until an issue was made of the same in the trial court.
This testimony, together with the evidence that appellant was found seated behind the wheel of one of the automobiles involved in the accident within a matter of minutes following the accident, established that appellant killed the deceased, which is the factum probandum herein.
In addition to the above, we have concluded that this is a case where the facts are in such juxtaposition one to another that only one logical conclusion may be drawn therefrom.
Remaining convinced of the soundness of our original decision herein, the appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.