Robert Barton, identification technician for the Des Moines police department, pointed out this fact, and also testified that gouge marks on the boxes in the safe which had been broken into fitted exactly with the peculiar conformation of the end and side of the steel punch, Exhibit 21. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said: "The objection of the defendant and his argument in his brief made to the competency and relevancy of this evidence are directed against its weight and not against its admissibility." The case is directly in point and we think announces the correct rule of law on the question of the time of the finding of Exhibit 21.Įxhibit 21 is of particular significance in the case at bar because it had a peculiarity *97 on one side, where an edge had been turned up. 125, 3 P.2d 244, certain exhibits were admitted into evidence which were found on the premises of the defendant several months after the commission of the offense. But so far as the time element is concerned, it affects the weight of the evidence rather than its admissibility. This, it will be noted, was well over two months after the burglary. ![]() This was found in a tool-box in defendant's car, on March 7, 1954. We find no merit in the complaint of lack of corroboration. His only other assignment is that certain exhibits offered by the state, including Exhibit 21, should not have been admitted because they were not shown to be sufficiently connected or identified with the defendant. "A conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice, unless corroborated by other evidence which shall tend to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely show the commission of the offense or the circumstances thereof."ĭefendant's major complaint is that Kepler's testimony was not sufficiently corroborated. Section 782.5, Code of Iowa 1950, I.C.A., provides: But Kepler was of course an accomplice, whose testimony standing alone would not be sufficient to warrant a conviction. His testimony without doubt connects the defendant directly with the burglary and makes him an active participant in it, and it is not contended otherwise. Kepler, who testified that on the night in question he went with the defendant and one Fletcher to Lacona, where he and the defendant broke into the store and the safe, while Fletcher sat in the car outside. ![]() The chief witness for the state was James W. Certain marks were left on the drawers which had not been there prior to the break in. From these, or one of them, approximately $200 in currency and coins was taken. Within the safe were certain drawers which were opened by use of a metal instrument. There was a breaking and entering of the building, and a safe therein was opened. ![]() Butler operated a produce and feed business was burglarized. On the night of December 21-22, 1953, a store building in the town of Lacona in which Kenneth J. Herrick, County Atty., Indianola, for appellee. *96 Edmund Scarpino and Donald Hise, Des Moines, for appellant.ĭayton Countryman, Atty. ![]() 68 N.W.2d 95 (1955) STATE of Iowa, Appellee,Ĭharles Harlan BALES, Appellant.
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