Court Opinion

ID: 9465393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:44:58.683117+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:09.311273
License: Public Domain

BAUER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion of Judge Sprecher for the reason therein stated: the evidence of the existence of a crime, absent the statement of the witness Trione concerning the defendant’s “admissions”, is non-existent.
Having said that, however, I have a fear that the opinion might be misconstrued to hold that evidence of a corpus delicti — an injury and a criminal agency responsible for such injury — must always be proved independently of the confession. Such is not the law.
The corpus delicti need not be established by evidence completely independent of the confession. If there is corroborating evidence which tends to confirm the circumstances related in the confession, both may be considered in determining whether the corpus delicti is sufficiently proved.1
In Smith v. United States, supra, cited in the opinion of Judge Sprecher, Mr. Justice Clark, writing for the Court, stated: “All elements of the offense must be established by independent evidence or corroborated admissions, but one available mode of corroboration is for the independent evidence to bolster the confession itself and thereby prove the offense ‘through’ the statements of the accused.” Id. at 156, 75 S.Ct. at 199.
Nothing in this record bolsters the confession/admission and the corpus delicti remains unproved. I concur in the reversal.

. One obvious situation in which this rule is particularly important would occur when a body is discovered under circumstances indicating foul play but after the body has so badly decomposed that proof of the cause of death cannot be established by evidence independent of a confession corroborated in various respects.' An example of such a case is found in People v. Melquist, 26 Ill.2d 22, 185 N.E.2d 825 (1962).