Rule without Reason: Requiring Independent Proof of the Corpus Delicti as a Condition of Admitting an Extrajudicial Confession
![handle is hein.journals/usflr27 and id is 397 raw text is: Rule Without Reason: Requiring
Independent Proof of the Corpus Delicti
as a Condition of Admitting an
Extrajudicial Confession
By THOMAS A. MULLEN*
MOST AMERICAN jurisdictions adhere to some form of the corpus
delicti rule, which bars admission in evidence of a criminal defend-
ant's extrajudicial confession unless the prosecution shows, by evidence
independent of the confession, that the crime charged was committed by
someone. In order to admit the confession for the purpose of identifying
the defendant as the person who committed the crime, the rule requires
the prosecution to prove the corpus delicti (the body of a crime),
through evidence other than the defendant's out-of-court confession.
The main purpose of the corpus delicti rule is to prevent deranged
people from being punished for imaginary crimes they claim to have
committed.2 Other supposed aims are to avoid reliance on dubious con-
fessions and to encourage independent police investigation.3 This Article
contends that the rule serves these purposes poorly, if at all, and any
dwindling vitality it retains owes mostly to judicial inertia. The history
of the corpus delicti rule in the United States, following an unwarranted
expansion from its circumscribed English origins, is one of rote applica-
* Harvard College, A.B., 1978; Harvard Law School, J.D., 1981; member, Massachu-
setts Bar.
1. See BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 344 (6th ed. 1990). The literal translation has lent
itself to the myths promoted by popular fiction, that the corpus delicti rule requires evidence of
a dead body as a predicate to a homicide conviction. From our first encounter with the
Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew and later with Mickey Spillane, we have known that the state
must prove that a crime has occurred, though we learned this in the context of corpseless
murder mysteries. Bullock v. State, 447 So. 2d 1284, 1286 (Miss. 1984). Murder can be
proven without evidence of a body just as arson can be shown without making a trial exhibit of
the charred timbers. Justice Story inveighed against the suggestion that the prosecution must
prove the existence of a dead body in a homicide case: [A] more complete encouragement
and protection for the worst offences of this sort could not be invented, than a rule of this
strictness. It would amount to a universal condonation of all murders committed on the high
seas. United States v. Gibert, 25 F. Cas. 1287, 1290 (C.C. Mass. 1834) (No. 15,204).
2. See infra part II.B.1.
3. See infra parts II.B.2, II.B.3.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/usflr27&div=15&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Rule without Reason: Requiring Independent Proof of the Corpus Delicti as a Condition of Admitting an Extrajudicial Confession
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most