Court Opinion

ID: 9711387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:30:53.580781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:04.486743
License: Public Domain

MulroNey, J.
(dissenting) — It is idle to talk about the grounds on which the rule requiring independent proof of the corpus delicti rests. It is not the common-law rule that is here invoked. It is a statute (section 782.7, Code, 1950.) which in positive language prohibits the conviction unless there is proof, other than the defendant’s extrajudicial confession, that the offense was committed. In other words, there must be proof of the corpus delicti other than the extrajudicial confession or declarations of the accused. I cannot see how one can read this record, and exclude all of the statements attributed to the defendant, and find any testimony that the crime of illegally transporting intoxicating liquor was committed. Nor do I understand the *1384majority to hold there is sufficient proof of the corpus delicti without considering the statements and declarations of the defendant. As I read the. majority opinion I understand it holds the’ “other proof” or the proof of the corpus delicti can come “indirectly from the lips of defendant”; that if the proof of exclamations and statements of the defendant are sufficient to show they were res gestae statements and declarations then they are “free from the inherent weaknesses of extrajudicial confessions or admissions”, and such evidence would in itself be sufficient proof of the corpus delicti on which to support the conviction.
But the probative value of the evidence of confessions or admissions is, as I see it, unimportant under the statute and the fact that the evidence as to confessions and admissions is admitted under various rules of evidence is likewise unimportant. As I read the statute it means there shall be no conviction when the only proof of the corpus delicti — here the illegal transportation of intoxicating liquor by someone — is to be found in the defendant’s confession and admissions. A confession or admission may be strong or weak, depending perhaps upon when it is made, but if it is extrajudicial the legislature in clear language has said it is insufficient. A confession is no less extrajudicial because it is or may be admissible under the res gestae rule governing admissibility of evidence. Carr v. State, 21 Ala. App. 299, 300, 107 So. 730. If the defendant’s admission or confession is to be the only proof of the corpus delicti then nothing short of a judicial confession will support the conviction. In the above cited case the opinion holds that the statements of the defendant at the time of his arrest were “in the nature of a confession or an admission of guilt”; that they were admissible under the principle of res gestae, but the court went on to hold that such statements even though admissible as part of the res gestae are “a mere extrajudicial confession * * * and cannot support a conviction.”
I think the closing lines of the early opinion of this court in State v. Dubois, 54 Iowa 363, 365, 6 N.W. 578, 579, are particularly applicable here. There Justice Beck, after reviewing all of the testimony, said:
*1385“In all this testimony there is not one word other than the confessions of defendant, tending to establish the corpus delicti— that the offense was committed. Our views and conclusions are based upon the most familiar principles of the law. "We cannot hesitate to apply them in this ease, though there is reason to fear that, by their application in this instance, a guilty man escapes punishment. But, however strong may be our belief of defendant’s guilt, we cannot overturn the law to sustain his conviction. By so doing justice would be more gravely offended than by his escape from punishment by the failure of the prosecution to produce legal evidence that an offense had been committed.”
I would reverse.
Hays, J., joins in this dissent.