Opinion ID: 1920445
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Sufficiency of Proof of the Corpus Delicti

Text: The Defendant now insists that the proof of the corpus delicti was insufficient to justify the jury's receiving evidence that the Defendant had admitted that he started the fire. Since the Defendant made no objection to the admission into evidence of his confession on the basis of the State's failure to prove the corpus delicti and thus raises the issue for the first time here on appeal, we consider only whether there was error of such a prejudicial effect as to constitute manifest error. State v. McKeough, Me., 300 A.2d 755 (1973); M.R. Crim.P., Rules 51 and 52; Glassman, Maine Practice § 51.2. In order to establish the corpus delicti, the State must adduce credible evidence which, if believed, would create in the mind of a reasonable man, not a mere surmise or suspicion, but . . . a really substantial belief. . . that someone had committed the crime of arson. State v. Grant, 284 A.2d 674, 676 (1971). See also State v. Atkinson, Me., 325 A.2d 44 (1974): State v. Levesque, 146 Me. 351, 81 A.2d 665 (1951). In the present case, the record shows that prior to the admission of the Defendant's confession, enough evidence to create such a substantial belief had been presented: at 11:20 a. m. prison officials had discovered a fire emanating from a hole in the ceiling in the doorless workshop latrine near the wall which separated the latrine from the locked stockroom; the hole appeared to have been created by the removal of a section of ceiling tile; on entering the stockroom, the officers found that above this ceiling hole was an overhead area of the stockroom from the floor of which two boards had been knocked out; crumpled, tightly packed newspapers were packed into the space between the two holes for no apparent non-criminal purpose; the paper was burning in the space between the latrine ceiling and the stockroom storage area floor, as were floorboards of the storage area around the hole; some of the burning paper had fallen over into a box of novelties which the prisoners had manufactured and stored there and these, too, were afire; the hole had not been seen by prison officials prior to discovery of the fire; there were no electrical wires in the hole or in its area. A reading of this evidence adduced in testimony prior to admission of the Defendant's confession leaves no doubt that there was adequate proof of the corpus delicti prior to and independent of admission of the confession. [2]