actually cases agenda number three case number one one two three seven zero people versus laura lee already laura counsel for the  court my name is just like a ball assistant state's attorney on behalf of the people your honour's in this case the defendant confessed to sexually assaulting eight year old j o on two separate occasions the victim's testimony and out of court statements corroborated the defendant's confession and all but one detail yet the appellate court reversed the jury's findings of fact for the sole reason that eight year old j o did not explicitly say that the defendant penetrated her vagina in so doing utilized in every element approach to the corpus like i rule that's not at all consistent with this court's most recent precedent according to this court the corpus to walk by rule requires that the independent evidence tend to show that a crime occurred and corroborate the defendant's statement the rule is not that the independent evidence must cooperate every element and this comes straight from this court's holdings and sergeant bounds perfect on klute here in this case your honor the victim testified that the bennett's hand was on her but china we have the defendant's testimony as well the question that you've asked actually looks more toward the sufficiency of the evidence entirely rather than just the corpus elect issue what we need to do in the corpus like under the corpus like a rules tend to show that a crime occurred we don't have to show her testimony alone does not have to establish penetration it has to tend to show that a crime occurred and it clearly does that here the concern of the corpus the lek they rule was that a defendant would be convicted of a crime when no crime occurred at all based on a full confession so the corpus to what i wrote provides  independent evidence must tend to corroborate the defect tensions show that a crime occurred and corroborate the defendant's confession and so that he's not convicted of a crime based on his statement alone but we don't have a statement only case here and it's undisputed that two and that's clearly demonstrated by this court's holdings and sergeant sounds perfect on foods here this court and sergeant citing to balance recently reiterated that the corpus to like the rule requires the independent evidence to tend to show that a crime occurred this cour and sergeant also stated that there may be circumstances where criminal activity of one type is so closely related to criminal activity of another type the cooperation of one may suffice to corroborate the other that statement itself repudiates and every element approach for instance inbounds in one thousand nine hundred five the defendant was convicted of aggravated kidnapping ag crim sex assault and murder but there was no independent evidence of an abduction or of back channel penetration those details came from the defendant's confession the same type of information we have here yet this court held that the independent evidence tended to show the commission of both an aggravated criminal sexual assault and an aggravated kidnapping as detailed in the defendant's confession the same is true in perfecto the independent evidence tended to show an aggravated battery but the only evidence of any sexual activity whatsoever was contained in the defendant's confession still this court found sufficient corroboration for the crime of forcible rape and here the defendant admitted to both penetration but there was no independent evidence to establish those kind of tray shims the defendant once again provided the details but that and this court held that that was sufficient the independent evidence was sufficient to corroborate aggravated criminal sexual assault if this court had applied and every element approach inbounds perfecto includes here you never would have affirmed the convictions in those cases the defendant relies its lucidly on three cases for support of his every element approach dalton from  zero four and roger's from one thousand fifty three but all three of those cases involve sex crimes and they were all decided before this court's decision and people versus shot and that was at a time when there was a basic distrust  sex crimes they were held to a higher standard of proof in the victim's testimony had to be corroborated so the rationale employed in those three cases was a likely clouded by that general distrust of sex crimes there are other cases from that same time period that did not involve sex crimes we are not every element was corroborated but this court how that was sufficient under the corpus to elect a rule and it seems that the holdings in dalton and with strength and rogers have already been abandoned they were not followed by this court and sergeant inbounds includes here in this case it appears that the appellate court ignored this court's most recent decisions and reverted back to a pre shot era the purpose of the corpus the lect i rule is to ensure that a defendant will not be convicted of a approach on the other hand looks to draw a distinction regarding which crime occurred not whether the crime occurred and every element approach also improperly combing goals the sufficiency of the evidence question with the corpus the like the issue for the first time on appeal to raise the sufficiency of the evidence question with an easier challenge under the quote the select i rule because with corpus the like to you're only looking at the independent evidence not all of our evidence so it allows a defendant to turn the to elect a rule into a sword to be used by guilty defendants to escape punishment rather than by rather than for its intended purpose as a shield by innocent defendants to protect from being convicted of crimes that did not occur in the  corpus elect a rule does not have to do all of the heavy lifting we still have reasonable doubt we still have jackson we still have all of the constitutional safeguards against a coerced confession corpus elected does not stand in place of those rules the  robbery first of all the independent evidence in this case does not contradict the defendant's confession in any way shape or form the victim herself said that the defendant's hand was on her vagina it is neither inconsistent with nor does that preclude the possibility statement does not preclude the possibility the penetration occurred the defendant said outside to it just he adds one additional detail but the victim's testimony alone does not have to establish penetration just tend to show a crime  crime and it's directly related to the crimes for which the defendant was convicted in consistencies between the independent out against and the defendant's confession can occur this court said in people v furby in one nine hundred ninety that they don't have to be the same the independent evidence and the confession look to see on a case by case basis what that inconsistency means does the inconsistency mean that the independent evidence fails to tend to establish that a crime occurred  dryas there were two doctors that testified there was one on behalf of the state want to be happy the defense all the defendants expert could say is that he could have been in a post it does state of a seizure but the only evidence that he had a seizure was the defendant statement himself the state's evidence reflected that he had not had a seizure he had taken his medication on time that the police had asked him if he had taken his medication the victim's mother actually forewarned the police that he had epilepsy and he never complained of anything to either the police the detectives or the medical staff that he saw later and the binder of the that was also dealt with in the motion to suppress statement the trier where the jury i'm sorry when the trial judge that he did not have a seizure because there were no doctors call emergency it was a trial court finding a fact that the defendant did not have a seizure that was made pursu  to the motion to suppress statement on the evidence that came out during that hearing courts every element approach would require the independent evidence to actually establish the crime of which the defendant was convicted and that's inconsistent with this court's rule because this court's rule says tend to establish or tend to show that a crime occurred and tend to show is a low standard you do not have to corroborate every element in order to tend to show that a crime occurred tend to shows the rule that's been used by this court as well as the majority of states across the nation it's a workable approach it serves the purpose of the corpus collect i roll and it balances the interest between the parties in fact in every element approach would actually act as an impediment to justice and this case illustrates that we have good evidence to support the defendant's convictions in this case and his confession is corroborated yet he would be able to escape punishment soley because jail did not explicitly say that he penetrated her vagina and you cannot let the appellate court's ruling stand because the appellate court believed that the victim did not corroborate the element of penetration it's on disputed that two sex crimes occurred this is not a statement only case and jail was able to provide many details about the attack the defendant's confession talks of the same two sexual assaults the same days the same locations and the same hand to vagina touching he just adds one detail j o might have said it outside of her private part in addition to the other things that she said but it's not inconsistent with nor does it preclude penetration and it's not unreasonable to assume that she didn't feel it either her testimony does not have to establish penetration it has to tend to show that a crime occurred that's done here the independent evidence shows that two sex crimes occurred and the independent evidence corroborates the defendant's confession so the corpus to elect a rule has been satisfied the appellate court's approach and its every element we would respectfully request that you reverse the appellate court's decision and reaffirm your holdings in sergeant bounds perfecto includes here but if you morning your honors morning counsel i may give my better with the office of the state of public defender on behalf of the defendant jason where may it please the court this cleric need not look beyond sergeant to resolve this case this case advents independent of the confession tending to show the specific crime charged did occur if present the corroborating evidence may be considered together with the confession to determine whether a crime has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt here the state did not produce any independent evidence tending to show that the specific crime of predatory quinnell sexual assault occurred because it did not produce any evidence tending to show that an act of penetration occurred  predatory criminal sexual assaults were not proven beyond a reasonable doubt second seargent clarifies that corroboration the independent evidence must relate to this specific events on which the prosecution is predicated although there was charged with eleven criminal counts the state elected to proceed although only two counts of predatory criminal sexual assault and after there was denied his right to a lesser included offense instruction on aggravated sexual abuse he was convicted of two counts of predatory criminal sexual assault thus under sergeant the state was required to produce independent evidence tending to show that there are committed each of the predatory criminal sexual assaults for which he was convicted this it did not do the state's independent evidence corroborated only lehrer's confession to the act of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and actually contradicted his confessions to be acts of predatory criminal sexual assault that involved digital penetration i'd it was not raised in the p r way or in the state's opening brief it appeared for the first time in the reply second and more importantly it actually makes no sense and isn't true so didn't and every single other case cited in the briefs makes clear that the corroboration requirement is very much related to the sufficiency of the evidence and not to the admissibility of a confession i would quote to you from sergeant for that proposition sergeant says and again i quote where defendant's confession is part of the proof of the corpus to lick di the prosecution must also reduce corroborating evidence independent of the defendant's own statement if a confession is not corroborated in this way a conviction based on the confession cannot be sustained and so of course it is a question of reasonable doubt now although i do not believe that this court need to look beyond sergeant to resolve this case i do think that dalton is also instructive and dalton the court acknowledged that age was an element of the offense of the indecent liberties with the child and that the state should technically be required to independently corroborate that element in order to prove the offense finding this particular requirement incompatible with the purpose of the cooperation rule however the court carved out a singular exception holding that one's admission of his age is an inherently reliable statement about an immutable characteristic and should not therefore be subject to cooperation the court also noted however that admissions about what one did or saw or heard or thought were subject to the infirmities of memory in perception under interrogation and were not inherently reliable like the admission of one's age and the stake claims that dalton over ruled was strained and rogers completely which had held that the state was required to corroborate every element but don't actually use the language this court used the language in delton that it was quote did or saw or heard or thought layers confession to be acts of penetration is of course an admission about what he did and don't instruct that such admissions are not inherently reliable and are subject to cooperation is not nearly so onerous a burden as a state pretends the requirement of corroboration of a specific offense is that could a state produce some evidence tending to show that the specific offense occurred it's not merely equivalent to proof beyond a reasonable doubt it's not even equivalent to clear and convincing evidence the case law indicates that the standard for corroboration would be something less than a preponderance of the evidence the state has cited several cases in which it claims that the fall substantial independent evidence corroborating the specific penetration based offense to which the defendants convict were convicted which they confessed and were convicted in particular the state side several cases involve a female victims testimony or out of court statements to be a fact that she was raped in common parlance the term rape very strongly connotes contact between the rapist penis and the victim's vagina or or mouth all of which constitute penetration under the law so cases in which the victim purports to have been raped do clearly involve corroborating evidence of a sex act involving penetration this case does not i would address in particular what the status said about bounds which i don't think is accurate bounds the defendant confessed to a murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault and an aggravated kidnapping and in determining whether or not the state had proven the aggravated criminal sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt the court looked at the state's independent evidence and it found all of the following to be corroborative evidence the thing is in b it's not actually clear what the charge was what type of penetration it was whether bajan or anal is not doesn't say in that case it just says one count of aggravated criminal sexual assault and then when the state is looking on whether or not that one count could be sustained it specifically notes that the victim was found naked from the waist down on a mattress in an abandoned building wearing a t shirt that didn't belong to her that her anus was dial a date and that they found equal matter on a broken broomstick in the room with her and the court cites to each of those things and says that it is corroborating evidence that a sexual assault occurred and there was only one sexual assault conviction and that case so clearly those things corroborated some act of penetration also very importantly and downs the defendant had in his confession he said that he had that gentle intercourse with the victim quote at least once and that he had had he he believed he had sex with her later in the day but couldn't remember because he was so intoxicated and he didn't specify what type of sex that was either so it's not clear whether the quote was looking to corroborate that gentle intercourse as opposed to well your honor i don't believe that this court absolutely has to answer the every element question i think that the sergeant itself is dispositive of the issue because it does say that where they confessed the way they were the defendant confesses to multiple offenses the state has to corroborate each individual offense and here the defendant on technical grounds he did confess to four acts that constitute four offenses and he was even charged separately with one count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse  many counts of predatory criminal sexual assault and this state continues to use this language crime and sergeant which obviously this court was very much cognizant of the our crime that crime dichotomy and sergeant was looking at that issue and it deliberately chose to use the language dot com and even sustained that defendant's convictions to two of six offenses and reversed the other ones so it was looking to see if there was corroboration for each individual offense and in this case the the only adamant that distinguishes an aggravated criminal sexual abuse from a predatory criminal sexual assault is a now is the element of penetration so i believe that in this case it would be impossible for the state to intend to show that a predatory criminal sexual assault occurred any less it tends to show that a penetration occurred and it certainly did not the says not exactly i mean i'm arguing i mean i'm saying this if this court wasn't inclined to answer that question it doesn't have to because sergeant is deposit dispositive however i do think that the case law does indicate that the that the evidence should corroborate that the state to depend on evidence should corroborate every element at least in a case like this one element is the only thing that distinguishes one particular offense that was confessed to from another offense  and the forensic interviewer at the child advocacy center specifically asked whether she was touched on the inside or outside of her vagina and she answered that she was touched on the outside and inside and outside are an penetration is an intrusion and outside definitely tends to contradict the intrusion there is the state in trying to reconcile inside and outside gets very much into anatomy and they want you to get out your medical encyclopedia and do some semantic somersaults but at the end of the day digital penetration requires an intrusion and the jail's statements that she was touched on are outside her do not tend to establish an intrusion into her sex organs in particular the idea that the state broached it and she said she was touched on her private where she pees that's months actually where she said she was asked which private part are you referring to the front part of the back part and she said the front part where i peek so those were really she was describing the general you know the general area of her vagina and she indicated with her hands from generally over that region and the state has pointed out she didn't necessarily know the difference between you know the your way through and all the other parts but she was just generally saying that she was touched outside of that words it gives very little detail as to the specifics of the defendant's confession or as to the state's corroborating evidence we don't know for example whether the victim was found new nude or fully clothed still perfecto involved  confession to a single offense forcible rape and the state produced some evidence to corroborate the defendant's confession to beating the victim into insensibility in order to effect a way to rape the state however relies  proposition that it can prove a sex offense but quote absolutely no evidence apart from the defendant's confession that a sexual act ever occurred i believe this interpretation of perfecto cannot possibly be correct under s i want to touch briefly on the rationale for the crab aeration rule i know this court is well familiar with the rationale so i won't belabor it but as this court implicitly recognized in sergeant the false confessions are not limited to cases where there are a fanciful narratives created from he was nineteen at the time of this interrogation a teenager he had absolutely no prior experience with the criminal justice system whatsoever he was on employed he lived at home with his mother he had well documented grandma epilepsy and attention deficit disorder and he would have been particularly susceptible to a trained interrogator beating him into a false confession that brings him back to justice freeman you had a question for the state about what the physician testified at the suppression hearing miranda and the court found that he didn't meet that burden but the doctor testified at trial not only that leo had well documented grandma epilepsy that he tended to minimize consistent with his that he didn't believe he had a seizure until some time had passed he tended to minimize his condition that was very severe the doctor also testified that he had a low seizure threshold on the name of his arrest as evidenced by the fact that after that incident his medication had been upgraded they had added an additional anti epileptic drug to his regime to help and he also testified that there is such a thing or generally when someone has a grand mal seizure and there  something called a post it will state in which they'll generally be confused and tired and later i testified that in retrospect he believed that he had had a seizure in his jail cell and that during the interrogation he answered a of yes or no questions in a post it does state and that he agreed that he must have confessed to these offenses but didn't commit them and i also want to comment about the absurd results predicted by the state the depending on the body parts or objects involved penetration is defined either by any contact however slight or by any intrusion however slight the critical language as far as proof is not the noun or nouns the victim uses to describe his anatomy but the verbs  propositions he or she uses to describe the contact or intrusion phrases like put on and stuck in a polling the appellate court's judgment will have no effect on the degree of linguistic perception required to secure convictions  because the state's independent evidence actually contradicted laris confession to be acts of penetration and the contradiction underscores the evident sharing weakness of the extra judicial confession to interrogators so even corpus to lick di of a given offense that's the only independent evidence actually contradicted the defendant's confession to that offense if your honour's have no other questions we ask this court to affirm the judgment of the appellate court thank you thank you your honors as a threshold matter there is no part of the state's brief that needs to be stricken corpus the lector is an evidentiary common law the history itself of corpus the lect i establishes that and sergeant actually ten support the state's case here the holding in star gent was when there is a multi count indictment that the independent evidence must tend to show that each crime occurred and silliness relates to that and says that the independent evidence does not have to establish these specific crime but must establish a crime that is related to those separate counts and in sergeant there was a complete absence of any evidence that tended to show the other counts insurgent th convictions weren't reversed because every element was not corroborated in those cases in that case the counts were reversed because not even a single element of those counts were it's corroborated the victim didn't say anything to establish any element of those other counts here the victim testified as to two separate instances of hand to vagina touching them absolutely support each count of predatory criminal sexual assault that the defendant was convicted of and the victim's testimony does not have to corroborate four separate acts the independent evidence must corroborate the crime for which the defendant was convicted in this case to crimes of predatory criminal sexual assault and we have that very clearly here defendant goes through as to why he would have over confessed his crimes he actually speculates as to how the police might have pressured him into over confessing his crimes or confessing up to his crimes but the defendant's argument is made up out of whole cloth there is no legitimate inference that could be drawn from the record in that case to support that argument we don't even need to speculate on appeal as to what happened during the interview the defendant testified and never said he felt pressured by the police or by augustina and he's never argued on appeal that his statement should not have been admitted in evidence at trial against him he lost his motion to suppress statement and he never challenge that ruling on appeal he only argues on appeal that one portion of his statement regarding one detail of the crimes is not worthy of belief that's a question for the jury and the defendant hangs his hat on dalton and was trained was trained on rogers but as i stated previously those cases were all decided before people be shot at a time when there was a general distrust of sex crimes those cases have already been abandoned this court did not follow them when it decided sargent bounds and clue two year and those are all much more recent cases than the one defendant relies on the defendant also argues that every element only needs to be loosely corroborated not proven beyond a reasonable doubt but the cases that the defendant relies on for that the independent evidence does not even loosely corroborate every element every count may have been loosely corroborated but not every element the defendant misconstrues the facts in those cases to make his argument inbounds there was no independent evidence of badgeman penetration or an abduction the defendant never said that he penetrated her and the this court did not consider the broomstick in the fecal matter as evidence to support the corpus direct analysis in fact with respect to the aggravated criminal sexual assault count this court said while not conclusive proof that an act of penetration occurred the undressed condition of the body tended to show that the victim was sexually assaulted and corroborated the defendant's description of the attack which was the victim's testimony in this case is not inconsistent with the defendant's statement the appellate court's ruling saying that it is is wrong they did not consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the state this is not a case where the victim said it didn't happen or the victim's testimony precludes the possibility that multiple crimes occurred and the victim's testimony does not preclude the possibility that the defendant penetrated her on two separate occasions her testimony is not in any w odds with the defendant's statement nor is it at odds with the child's with a commonsense understanding of a child's description of the events in this case the independent evidence does everything this court's corpus dellec the requires it to do it involved the defendant's hand in the victim's the china that is directly related to the crimes for which the defendant was convicted the quickest electoral has been satisfied the child statement the child like statement that defense counsel refers to and that we're talking about a distinction between verbs and nouns and p p m i have a j j or tongue to my private or finger in my booty none of those deal with the issue at hand which is the digital penetration of the female sex organ and yes for anatomical reasons and legal reasons digitally penetrating the female sex organ is different than digital penetration of any other organ in the defendant's examples there are entirely irrelevant it certainly would not promote justice to allow a sex offender who sexually assaults the most vulnerable of victims to avoid conviction because bad victim while able to describe many other details of the attack cannot corroborate or cannot talk about or describe the act of penetration but that's what this court would be doing within every element approach you would punish the defendant less severely for choosing a victim who is asleep on conscious or drugged or intoxicated or if she's pre verbal or developmentally delayed or perhaps she lacks feeling below her waist or force was being used on one part of her body and she was unable to describe or understand where with honors where within her sex organ she was being violated or she's just too young or too scared to understand the finer details of the attack to be clear this we are not asking this court to do anything no we simply ask that you apply the corpus to elect a rule as  recently restated it in sergeant and as you applied it in cases like balance perfect or include here the appellate court's holding is inconsistent with this court's corpus to elect a rule and it results in a manifest in justice we respectfully request that you reverse the appellate court's decision and reaffirm what you've done in sergeant sounds perfect don't include chair thank you thank you for your argument case number one zero one two three seven zero people versus state of illinois versus jason laura's taken under vice in the job number three mr marshall the almost supreme court stands adjourned until nine am tomorrow morning may sixteenth two thousand and twelve