Court Opinion

ID: 9772484
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:19:29.56503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:44.820312
License: Public Domain

DAVIDSON, Judge,
dissenting.
The only testimony outside of and other than the confession that might suggest that appellant was at any time the driver of a *200motor vehicle was that of Officer Roberts to the effect that he saw two colored men take him out of a red flat-bed truck.
Appellant did not testify.
There is an absence of any testimony, in this connection, that appellant owned a truck, or that the truck described was registered in his name. Nor is there any testimony showing that the truck did not belong to and was not registered in the name of either of the colored men who took appellant therefrom or that either of them was not the driver of the truck that struck the injured girl.
An extrajudicial confession is not alone sufficient to establish the corpus delicti or the guilt of the accused. There must be other and additional evidence which establishes such facts.
It is true that other and additional facts may be shown by circumstantial evidence which, among other things, is that every hypothesis other than the guilt of the accused is excluded.
When my brethren say that the inference to be drawn from the fact that appellant was taken from the truck by the two colored men, together with his failure in the confession to mention that others had been in the truck with him at the time of the collision, is that he was the driver of the truck, they destroy one of the cardinal rules relative to circumstantial evidence — which is that an inference may not be based upon an inference.
Here is a flagrant violation of that rule, for my brethren say that proof of the fact that appellant was taken from a truck by two persons creates the inference that he drove the truck, because of the further inference to be taken from the fact that he did not say anything in the confession about any one else having been with him.
My brethren cite the Bosquez case, No. 29,590, this day delivered (page 147, this volume), as authority for their holding that an inference may be based upon an inference and that the evidence, here, is therefore sufficient to corroborate the confession.
The Bosquez case is not in point or controlling, here. Bosquez testified, and it was upon his testimony that the majority of the court base their conclusion in that case.
*201Here, the appellant did not testify.
The Bosquez case is wrong and, insofar as I am concerned, the error therein is demonstrated by my dissenting opinion in that case.
I dissent.