Williams v. State
Williams v. State
Opinion of the Court
Alfred Williams was charged with breaking and entering the storehouse of Wilkins, Neely & Jones, and ■stealing therefrom one gun and three pairs of shoes. He was convicted, and his motion for a new trial was overruled. The grounds of the motion are, that the verdict is contrai’y to law and evidence; and that “the court erred in allowing witness Wilkins to testify as to confessions made to him at the jail, and after certain inducements had been made to the defendant by a partner of ■said Wilkins,” and “in allowing witness Wilkins and William E. Jones to state that they went to the jail because they had received a message from defendant.”
William E. Jones testified: Defendant was arrested •on Tuesday after the burglary on Saturday night. I had a talk with him; we tried to get him to tell us if he had been down in the store or not; then I had another talk with him at the jail. He sent me word by his father to come there to see him, and I went. I never ■offered him any inducement at all to make any confes
W. A. Wilkins testified: I had a talk with Alfred a few days after he was arrested. I think it was the same day Jones had his convei’sation with him. (Question : “What did he tell you?” Counsel for defendant here objected to Wilkins testifying to any confession made by defendant to him, on the ground that Jones had held out inducement. By the court: “If there was any promise held out to the defendant, it was to te.ll who the other parties were; and any admissions as to who the other parties were I don’t think would be admissible, and so rule. But, according to the witness’s testimony, he held out no promise to him to get any confession as to his own guilt.”) Witness : I went there in response to a message that I had received, and he told me how they got in (describing the mode of entrance, etc., substantially as stated in Jones’ testimony). He told me that he stole a gun, a watch and some shoes; and these articles were missed. He said that they carried the things off; that they had been in there before four or five times. We always found the door open and the window closed; it was always on Saturday night,, because the store would be open until 10 or 11 o’clock, and these boys would go in there and pretend to get-water and unkey this window; and if he had not told us, we would not have known anything about it yet.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.