A confession doesn’t necessarily mean a criminal case is a slam dunk but it may soon be closer to a layup.
Arkansas law requires supporting evidence a crime occurred unless the confession comes in open court.
“A confession alone without any other proof whatsoever should never be enough to convict anybody,” said John Threet, Washington County prosecutor. “If someone comes in and says I’m confessing to the murder of John Doe and no one can find any evidence that John Doe even existed, well they shouldn’t be charged with that crime and they shouldn’t be convicted of that crime.”
Legal Lingo
Corpus Delicti
Latin for the “body of the crime.” Used to describe physical evidence a crime has been committed, such as the corpse of a murder victim or the charred frame of a torched building. It’s used to refer to the underlying principle that, without evidence of a crime having been committed, it would be unjust to convict someone.
Source: Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary
A state law taking effect in August will make it easier for prosecutors to use out-of-court confessions to police against criminal defendants when the defendant, or witnesses, change their testimony at trial.
Act 983 amends the law that states a defendant’s confession, unless made in open court, doesn’t warrant a conviction unless it is accompanied by other proof the offense was committed. The amendment states a confession can now be supported by “substantial independent evidence that the offense was committed.”
“Before, the law would require you to prove that crime was actually committed. Now, what the law allows you to do is, basically, corroborate his confession. You’re trying to show evidence that makes his confession trustworthy,” Threet said. “The flip side of it is if they confess in open court, like they always do on Perry Mason, you’re golden.”
The new law, which has been the federal standard for some time, will take some time to figure out, according to Scott Parks, a Washington County public defender.
“It’s a much fuzzier standard,” Parks said. “What is the definition of substantial evidence? That’s an open question. Tending to establish the trustworthiness? There’s definitely going to be a lot of litigation on the sufficiency of the corroborating evidence. Was that evidence sufficient or substantial enough to establish the trustworthiness? It’s definitely a grayer standard than we’ve had in the past.”
Parks said he’s not sure if such evidence will be a matter of law or a fact question for the jury.
“In the past the question of whether a defendant made a confession but there wasn’t other evidence of the crime, that would be a question of law for a motion for a directed verdict,” Parks said. “Does this make the sufficiency of the corroboration of the confession a fact question for a jury as opposed to a question of law? I don’t know how that’s going to be applied.”
Parks said defense attorneys will probably have to hit the books and look at how the federal courts have handled the issue.
“I’m sure there’s federal case law to provide guidance, but it’s really a new world out there for us in Arkansas,” Parks said.
Parks stopped short of saying the new law will give prosecutors an advantage but said it appears to preclude an option of attack for the defense.
The new law came in response to cases from Springdale and Conway.
In the Springdale case, Brandon Wayne Hutson pleaded guilty to the rape of a 3-year-old girl in a Walmart restroom. Threet said the case would have been very difficult to prove had Hutson opted to fight the charges because of the age of the victim and scarce physical evidence. Hutson was captured on surveillance video taking the child to the restroom but there was no video and no witnesses to what happened inside.
The new law would have helped in that case because the video evidence of Hutson taking the child could be used to substantiate his confession.
“We can bring in the videotape of him taking a girl he doesn’t know into the bathroom at Walmart and staying in there for however many minutes,” Threet said. “That tends to establish his statement is trustworthy because we’ve got corroborating evidence, separate and apart from his statement, that would make one tend to believe that he did it.”
In the Conway case, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in 2008 the state failed to meet its burden of offering other proof Marvin Earl Goodsell molested two children.
Goodsell recanted his confession to police during trial and the children also changed their stories. Goodsell’s convictions were thrown out by the Arkansas Supreme Court on appeal. Threet used language from the ruling in that case to propose an amendment, which became part of the Arkansas Prosecuting Attorney’s Association’s legislative package.
“I think the biggest impact you will see is in cases where you have young victims, or victims who want to recant and take it back for whatever reason. When we have a confession, we now have a much better chance at getting a conviction whereas before if you only had a confession, that wasn’t always going to do it, as was proven in that case I borrowed the language from.”