125 S.W. 397
DORHAM 
v. 
STATE.
Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.
February 9, 1910.
        Appeal from District Court, Freestone County; H. B. Daviss, Judge.
        John Dorham was convicted of burglary, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.
        Bell & Fryer, for appellant. John A. Mobley, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
        McCORD, J.
        This is an appeal from a conviction for burglary, with a penalty of two years' confinement in the 
penitentiary.
        The court, among other things, charged the jury as follows: "A conviction cannot be had upon the 
testimony of an accomplice, unless corroborated by other evidence tending to connect the defendant with 
the offense committed, and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely shows the commission of the 
offense." The court further instructed the jury as follows: "Now you are instructed that the witness Clint 
Huckaby was an accomplice, as that term is defined in the foregoing instructions, and you are instructed 
that you cannot find the defendant, John Dorham, guilty upon Clint Huckaby's testimony alone, unless you 
first believe that the testimony of said Clint Huckaby is true, and that it shows, or tends to show, that the 
defendant is guilty as charged in the indictment, and unless you further believe that there is other 
evidence in the case, outside of the testimony of said Clint Huckaby, which clearly and strongly tends to 
connect the defendant with the commission of the offense charged." This charge was excepted to in 
appellant's motion for new trial, and the exception was well taken. This question has been before this 
court so often, and this character of charge condemned in so many cases, we deem it unnecessary to 
discuss this matter further. A correct charge on accomplice testimony was set out in the case of Campbell 
v. State, 123 S. W. 583, and approved in the more recent cases of King v. State, 123 S. W. 135, from 
Tom Green county,
Page 398
and Brown v. State, 124 S. W. 101, from Kaufman county.
        This is the only question in the case we deem of sufficient importance to notice. The other questions 
are such as will not likely occur upon another trial. The fact that the witness Huckaby was an accomplice 
to the crime, and the circumstances offered by the state in corroboration of his testimony being so slight, 
we are of opinion that the charge of the court that, if the evidence of Huckaby tended to connect 
defendant with the commission of the offense, etc., was an error not only calculated to, but did, injure the 
appellant; and for this reason the judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded.
        DAVIDSON, P. J., absent.