Corroboration Required in Accomplice, Snitch, and Informant Cases in Texas

 

Legislature had the correct experience to require corroboration of sure prosecution witnesses earlier than a jury should legally convict anybody for a crime. For years the accomplice witness rule avoided the authorities from convicting anyone primarily based fully upon the testimony of an accomplice.

That is, any individual who was concerned in the crime, got caught and then became State's proof to retailer FIND MORE LEGAL ARTICLES their own hide. Everyone knew such testimony was once inherently unreliable and should mechanically lead to the imprisonment of innocent people.

Consequently, the accomplice witness rule demanded a defendant not be convicted of an offence on the testimony of an accomplice except corroborated by means of other proof tending to connect the defendant with the crime. Moreover, corroboration used to be not enough if it basically showed the commission of the offence.

In different words, even if a jury believed the whole lot a confederate witness testified about, the regulation prohibited a conviction except there used to be other proof connecting the accused to the crime. In current years, two new legal guidelines had been enacted requiring corroboration of different sorts of prosecution witnesses. First was once the jailhouse snitch rule and then the drug informant rule.

Both rules have been comparable to the confederate witness rule in that corroboration used to be required before a jury ought to convict any person based on the testimony of these witnesses. Again, the inherently unreliable nature of this testimony raised the spectre of convicting innocent persons. Interestingly, Texas case regulation has held one kind of unreliable witness can't 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 same holds proper for drug informant testimony. The undertaking for the Bryan-College Station crook protection legal professional is getting the jury to commit to corroboration. In different words, if a Brazos County jury believed the confederate was telling the truth, they'd be reluctant to acquit anybody based totally on their perceived ethical 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 property information is that appellate courts use the corroboration requirement when evaluating proof sufficiency questions. Stated every other way, if there really is no corroboration, the defendant has an awesome risk to enchantment for a reversal.