Johnson v. State

The defendant was convicted of arson and sentenced to ten years of penal servitude. It was alleged that he feloniously set fire to cotton contained in an automobile trailer..

Two errors assigned are (1) that the corpus delicti was not established by evidence independent of a confession, and (2) that the confession was not voluntary, and therefore it was inadmissible.

Since the judgment must be reversed on the first ground, the second point will not be discussed.

The prosecuting witness Branch testified that the cotton in question was brought from one of his fields on the afternoon of October 24;…