State v. Hamer

The prisoner insists initially that he is entitled to a new trial because the trial judge erred in admitting his second extrajudicial statement in evidence. He bases tbis contention on the theory that all the evidence adduced on the preliminary inquiry showed this statement to he involuntary in character.

We accept as valid the definition of Dean Wigmore, the great master of the law of evidence, that “a confession is an acknowledgment in express words hy the accused in a criminal case of the truth of the guilty fact charged or of some essential part of it.” Wigmore on Evidence (3d Ed., 1940),…