Court Opinion

ID: 9567234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:51:05.579981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:27.508702
License: Public Domain

Bell, Chief Judge,
dissenting. To sustain a conviction in a felony case upon the testimony of an accomplice, there must be corroborating facts or circumstances, which, in themselves and independently of the testimony of the accomplice, directly connect the defendant with the crime, or lead to the inference that he is guilty, and more than sufficient to merely cast on the defendant a grave suspicion of guilt. Code § 38-121; Allen v. State, 215 Ga. 455 (2) (111 SE2d 70). The only evidence in this burglary case that connects the defendant with the commission of the crime is the testimony of an accomplice, a co-indictee. The defendant in his statement, while admitting that he did join with two other individuals to proceed from Atlanta to Hampton to burglarize a drug store, stated that he withdrew from this intended criminal venture about 3 miles from Hampton and took no part in the burglary. This admission of an intention to commit the crime plus his later withdrawal will not make the defendant a person concerned in the commission of a crime under amended Code § 26-801 and is insufficient to corroborate the testimony of the accomplice. Thus the evidence is insufficient to sustain the conviction and the judgment below should be reversed.
I am authorized to state that Judges Quillian, Clark and Stolz concur in this dissent.