That is, any person who was concerned in the crime, received caught and then grew to become State's proof to retailer FIND MORE LEGAL ARTICLES their own hide. Everyone knew such testimony was once inherently unreliable and need to routinely lead to the imprisonment of harmless people.
Consequently, the accomplice witness rule demanded a defendant now not be convicted of an offence on the testimony of an accomplice without corroborated via capability of other proof tending to connect the defendant with the crime. Moreover, corroboration used to be now not ample if it essentially confirmed the commission of the offence.
In distinctive words, even if a jury believed the whole lot a confederate witness testified about, the rules prohibited a conviction except there used to be other proof connecting the accused to the crime. In modern-day years, two new criminal tips had been enacted requiring corroboration of one-of-a-kind varieties of prosecution witnesses. First was once the jailhouse snitch rule and then the drug informant rule.
Both rules have been related to the confederate witness rule in that corroboration used to be required earlier than a jury ought to convict any character primarily based on the testimony of these witnesses. Again, the inherently unreliable nature of this testimony raised the spectre of convicting harmless persons. Interestingly, Texas case rules have held one variety of unreliable witness cannot be used to corroborate another. For example, a jailhouse snitch can't be used to corroborate the testimony of an accomplice, and vice-versa.
The identical holds perfect for drug informant testimony. The task for the Bryan-College Station crook protection criminal expert is getting the jury to commit to corroboration. In exclusive words, if a Brazos County jury believed the accomplice was once telling the truth, they'd be reluctant to acquit anyone based definitely on their perceived moral accountability to convict the guilty. Sometimes a crime is so awful, or the jury so afraid, that they invent corroboration in order to convict.
The excellent information is that appellate courts use the corroboration requirement when evaluating proof sufficiency questions. Stated each and every other way, if there certainly is no corroboration, the defendant has a tremendous hazard to enchantment for a reversal.
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