Court Opinion

ID: 9700140
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:12:23.56134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:07:48.224031
License: Public Domain

Boyle, J.
(dissenting). I dissent from the Court’s holding.
*554I would abolish the common-law rule1 and adopt the rule that a confession is admissible to prove all elements of an offense if there is substantial independent evidence tending to establish the trustworthiness of the statement, including the statement itself.
i
Almost eighty years ago, Judge Learned Hand felt constrained to follow the common-law corpus delicti rule while doubting that it “has in fact any substantial necessity in justice . . . .” Daeche v United States, 250 F 566, 571 (CA 2, 1918). The rule was “never well adapted to its purpose,”2 and took root during the nineteenth century. The original basis was a desire to avoid conviction on recanted confessions to a nonexistent homicide. Three discrete policies supporting the rule have been articulated: avoiding reliance on repudiated confessions out of a concern for voluntariness, protecting mentally unstable persons who falsely confess, and promoting better law enforcement by precluding reliance on confessions. However, “[i]n every case, the rationale proves too much while the corpus delicti rule delivers too little.”3
To the extent that the reason for the rule was to avoid reliance on unreliable confessions, or to protect the mentally unstable, its utility has been met and surpassed by protections afforded under the constitu*555tionalization of criminal procedure and other statutory guarantees. Due process is violated where a confession is obtained by exploitation of a defendant’s probable insanity, Blackburn v Alabama, 361 US 199; 80 S Ct 274; 4 L Ed 2d 242 (1960), or where the totality of the circumstances renders the confession involuntary, People v Wright, 441 Mich 140; 490 NW2d 351 (1992). The burden is on the state to show voluntariness, and a defendant’s mental limitations are taken into account in determining whether the statement was the product of the defendant’s free will. People v Belknap, 146 Mich App 239; 379 NW2d 437 (1985).
Prompt arraignment and determination of probable cause is guaranteed by the United States Constitution and by court rule. Riverside Co v McLaughlin, 500 US 44; 111 S Ct 1661; 114 L Ed 2d 49 (1991).4 Custodial questioning on less than probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment, Dunaway v New York, 442 US 200; 99 S Ct 2248; 60 L Ed 2d 824 (1979). The warnings mandated by Miranda v Arizona, 384 US 436; 86 S Ct 1602; 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966), to dissipate the inherent pressures of custodial interrogation, assure all defendants the right to remain silent and the presence of counsel during interrogation. Edwards v Arizona, 451 US 477; 101 S Ct 1880; 68 L Ed 2d 378 (1981), establishes a bright-line rule protecting against any subsequent police-initiated interrogation following exercise of Fifth Amendment rights, or Sixth Amendment rights regarding specific offenses. Michigan v Jackson, 475 US 625; 106 S Ct 1404; 89 L Ed 2d 631 (1986). Every defendant has a *556statutory right to the determination of mental competency, MCL 768.20a; MSA 28.1043(1), and Miranda warnings are required. People v Wright, 431 Mich 282; 430 NW2d 133 (1988). A writ of habeas corpus to inquire into the cause of detention, and an order to show cause why a writ should not issue, may be brought on behalf of a person imprisoned “under any pretense whatsoever.” MCL 600.4307; MSA 27A.4307.
Thus, as decades of precedent clearly establish, any “suggestion that the corpus delicti rule meaningfully buttresses the right against coerced self-incrimination is anachronistic at best.” Mullen, Rule without reason: Requiring independent proof of the corpus delicti as a condition of admitting an extrajudicial confession, 27 U SF LR 385, 405 (1993). As the author of this commentary correctly notes:
The hollowness of the voluntariness rationale is best shown by the rigid applicability of the corpus delicti rule regardless of whether the voluntariness of a confession is in doubt. The rule bars concededly voluntary confessions where there is no independent proof of crime, but does not block the admission of dubious confessions if the prosecution meets a low threshold of evidence supporting the occurrence of the crime.
To the extent that courts have described the reason for the common-law rule as protecting against the conviction of a person suffering from mental aberration,5 our current jurisprudence provides more protections for an unstable person than does the common-law rule. Although the state may not exploit *557mental instability and procure a confession that passes constitutional muster, the common-law corpus delicti rule provides no protection to a person of limited intelligence or an unstable person pleading guilty to a crime someone else has committed.6 Contemporary jurisprudence has likewise undermined the law-enforcement rationale. Where a confession is obtained in full compliance with constitutional requirements of prompt arraignment, advice of rights, presence of counsel upon exercise of rights, and the state’s demonstration of a free and voluntary waiver, Johnson v Zerbst, 304 US 458; 58 S Ct 1019; 82 L Ed 1461 (1938), it does not promote good law enforcement to disallow use of the confession in evidence.
Finally, to the extent that the majority and the common-law rule rest on the fear that juries will accord undue weight to confessions, the rule likewise promises too much, while it delivers too little. Not only do current constitutional protections elevate the reliability of confessions, the constitution is now construed to guarantee that a conviction must be established by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v Virginia, 443 US 307; 99 S Ct 2781; 61 L Ed 2d 560 (1979). The constitution, decisional law, and statutes dictate that a confession is admissible only if made within a reasonable time after arraignment, after full advice and waiver of rights, under circumstances indicating it was not otherwise coerced or involuntary, *558and that a conviction will be upheld only if there is corroboration of all elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.
In summary, if evidence is offered that corroborates some aspect of a voluntary confession and proves its truthfulness, the rationales variously advanced to explain the corpus delicti rule have been served. The majority’s reason for retention of the rule that benefits this defendant, as opposed to other confessing defendants, is that the defendant “deserves the benefit of independent proof of the crime . . . .” Ante at 548, n 7. However, no rational reason is advanced to explain why a defendant careless enough to leave a body or other corroboration will be confronted with his voluntary confession while the more cunning defendant will not. Bereft of legal or logical foundation, the only justification for the common-law rule is to preclude conviction.7 That is a justification this Court should not endorse. People v Williams, 422 Mich 381, 392; 373 NW2d 567 (1985).
n
Given that the common-law rule serves no contemporary purpose and inhibits conviction of the admittedly guilty, this Court should embrace the rule adopted more than forty years ago by the United States Supreme Court. In Opper v United States, 348 US 84, 93; 75 S Ct 158; 99 L Ed 101 (1954), the Court abandoned the common-law rule requiring evidence *559independent of the confession as a predicate to admissibility and held that a confession is admissible when the government introduces “substantial independent evidence which would tend to establish the trustworthiness of the statement.”
In Smith v United States, 348 US 147, 156; 75 S Ct 194; 99 L Ed 192 (1954), the Court further explained, “it is sufficient, if the corroboration merely fortifies the truth of the confession, without independently establishing the crime charged . . . .” However, the people must not only provide substantial independent evidence tending to establish the truthfulness of a confession or admission; the people must also corroborate all elements of the offense established by the admission:
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,.]
Agreeing that the protection provided by the common-law rule can be provided by careful scrutiny of the evidence by a conscientious judge, Professor McCormick states that “The Supreme Court’s Opper approach is adequate to serve such need as exists.”8 Opper imposes on trial judges a duty to assure, if the prosecution’s case rests on the defendant’s out-of-court admission, that the prosecution has produced reasonable evidence other than that admission to establish the trustworthiness of the admission or confession.
*560First, the trustworthiness requirement more directly protects the confessing defendant than does the coipus delicti rule articulated in People v Williams, supra, or People v Allen, 390 Mich 383; 212 NW2d 21 (1973). The latter approach insures only that a crime has been committed, while the former insures that the particular admission is sufficiently reliable to be heard by the factfinder.
Second, as observed above, the suggestion that the corpus delicti rule meaningfully buttresses the right against coerced self-incrimination is anachronistic. State v Van Hook, 39 Ohio St 3d 256, 260-261; 530 NE2d 883 (1988); Willoughby v State, 552 NE2d 462, 466 (Ind, 1990); State v Parker, 315 NC 222, 235; 337 SE2d 487 (1985). Because, the corroboration rule is duplicative of the fairness protections of Escobedo9 and Miranda and the voluntariness doctrine, it cannot be supported on the ground that it will prevent excessive use of involuntary confessions. Professor McCormick concludes:
The major advantage of the trustworthiness approach is that it provides some protection against conviction on the basis of inaccurate confessions while avoiding serious problems involved in the corpus delicti formulation. [1 McCormick, Evidence (4th ed), § 145, p 560.]
The rigid application of the common-law rule in the case before us demonstrates the anomalous consequence of applying a rule designed to protect against involuntary confessions, to exclude a voluntary confession whose truthfulness is corroborated.
*561While the majority defends its maintenance of this anomaly by stating that “many other states continue to abide by the common-law corpus delicti doctrine,” Ante at 549, n 9, it has been repeatedly10 shown that courts have created numerous exceptions to the rule to avoid the harsh consequence of freeing the admittedly guilty by rigid application of the rule. “The corpus delicti rule, however, frequently suffers distortions of such magnitude that a want of intellectual honesty must rank among the costs of maintaining it. The common need to work around the rule to achieve justice suggests that justice would be better served by abandoning the rule.” Mullen, Rule without reason, supra, p 417.
Under the trustworthiness doctrine, direct proof of homicide is not required, and neither the body of the missing person nor evidence of the method used to kill the victim is required. However, the federal rule requires that the prosecution must produce evidence corroborative of the confession’s reliability. Thus, although the trustworthiness doctrine is like the corpus delicti rule in that it protects the situation where no crime has been committed, it is superior to the corpus delicti rule because it also protects a defendant who confesses falsely to an actual crime that someone else has committed.11 Where there is an *562indication of unreliability, “the trial judge . . . should exercise great care in determining whether the statements of the accused were corroborated.” United States v Calderon, 348 US 160, 164; 75 S Ct 186; 99 L Ed 202 (1954).
The corpus delicti rule does not protect the guilty-pleading defendant, presumably because a judge is charged with evaluating the reliability of the in-court confession. State v Schomaker, 303 NW2d 129 (Iowa, 1981). Where the confessing defendant recants and goes to trial, the trustworthiness doctrine likewise insures that the trial judge will make a preliminary determination not only that the defendant has been afforded constitutional and statutory rights, but that there is substantial independent evidence of reliability. As one commentator has observed:
It is much less likely that a person will be erroneously convicted as the result of a contested trial where the only evidence is a repudiated confession than that he will be erroneously convicted on a plea of guilty where no evidence whatsoever is presented. [Gustafson, Have we created a paradise for criminals?, 30 S Cal L R 1, 9 (1956).]
Moreover, regarding crimes in which no tangible injury or loss occurs, and the crime cannot be found to be committed without reference to a specific defendant, the federal rule is superior. In that case, the corpus delicti would require evidence of all three elements of a crime including the identity of the offender, thus providing greater protection to an accused “than the rule affords to a defendant in a homicide prosecution . . . .” Smith v United States, supra at 154.
*563Because the corpus delicti rule produces a socially aberrant result, while adding no additional protection to the recanting defendant than that offered by the shield of contemporary jurisprudence and the trustworthiness doctrine, the rule should be abandoned. No state statute or privilege compels the rule, and the approach is incompatible with Rule 104(a) of the Michigan Rules of Evidence, which confines questions of admissibility to the trial court in furtherance of the overall goal to promote the ascertainment of truth. The trustworthiness rule preserves a judicial check on the reliability of recanted confessions and reposes trust in the factfinder to evaluate a confession in the same manner it resolves all other evidentiary questions.12
in
Today, the conviction of a person who every justice on this Court, along with twelve jurors, believe has killed his victim, is reversed because of the efficiency of garbage collection and disposal. Reconviction is problematic. Such results have lead some states to redefine the common-law version of corpus delicti13 and adopt the Wigmore view14 that the corpus delicti is the fact of the specific loss or injury sustained. Other states have ameliorated such harsh consequences by reducing the quantum of evidence neces*564sary to show criminal agency. These developments evidence that barring convictions in the name of the corpus delicti rubric is anomalous to the fair administration of justice. They demonstrate that
the value of the corpus delicti rule exceeds the price paid to maintain it — a price exacted in the form of reversed convictions of guilty persons, prosecutions abandoned or never begun for want of independent evidence of the corpus delicti, and tortured appellate reasoning to sustain convictions obtained in violation of the rule. [Mullen, supra, p 386.]
Rather than create exceptions to evade the rule or perpetuate a rule that frees the guilty and draws far more support from stare decisis than from any logic or social policy, id. at 416, several jurisdictions15 define the corpus as the fact of loss, rather than loss plus criminal agency, or loss, agency, and the identity of the defendant as the responsible party:
[T]he contrast between the first and the other elements is what is emphasized by the rule; i.e., it warns us to be cautious in convicting, since it may subsequently appear that no one has sustained any loss at all; for example, a man has disappeared, but perhaps he may later appear alive. To find that he is in truth dead, yet not by criminal violence, i.e., to find the second element lacking, is not the discovery against which the rule is designed to warn and protect us. [7 Wigmore (Chadboum rev), § 2072, p 525.]
The fact that jurisdictions retaining the loss plus criminal agency definition have manipulated the quan*565turn of proof of agency to require a bare minimum threshold is cited by commentators as further evidence that the rule is unworkable. Mullen, supra, p 390. Writing before the decisions in Miranda and Jackson v Virginia, supra, Professor Perkins described the quantum as prima facie evidence citing cases that hold that “[t]he corroborative proof ‘need show only the probability that a crime has been committed.’ ” Perkins, The corpus delicti of murder, 48 Va LR 173, 181, n 42 (1962), citing Hays v State, 214 Miss 83, 86; 58 So 2d 61 (1952). More recently, California and panels of our own Court of Appeals have explicitly held that evidence consistent with criminal agency is sufficient to support admission of a confession. People v Mattson, 50 Cal 3d 826, 874; 789 P2d 983 (1990). See also People v Wise, 134 Mich App 82; 351 NW2d 255 (1984). While Perkins also states that proof of the unexplained disappearance of the alleged victim is never sufficient in itself to establish the corpus delicti, where a body is found, proof of the corpus delicti is sufficient if it points to an unlawful slaying, despite the fact that it is consistent with accident or suicide. Perkins, Criminal Law (3d ed), § 1, p 146, n 9. The approach is consistent with the trend of state courts to avoid the harsh consequences of the traditional rule by flexible definition of the quantum of independent proof. Mullen, supra, p 392, n 33:
Depending on the jurisdiction, a crime may be proven sufficiently by “slight evidence,” any or “some” evidence, evidence “tending to show” that a crime was committed, evidence that can “support an inference” that a crime occurred, “prima facie” evidence, evidence amounting to “probable cause,” “substantial” evidence, or a “preponderance” of the evidence. . . . Also rarely articulated is the distinction frequently drawn between the quantum of evi*566dence required to support the first element of corpus delicti (loss or injury) and that demanded to support the second (criminal agency).” [Id. at 390-391, 393.]
The many exceptions and limitations courts have created to avoid the consequences of literal application of the rule supports the conclusion that the rule should be abandoned. It should be frankly admitted that the evidentiary costs of the rule are unjustified by a need to provide additional safeguards surrounding the extrajudicial words of the accused. The traditional rule is at its most mischievous when, despite the loss being shown, the factfinder is unable to hear a validly obtained and voluntary confession.16
IV
The decedent, who habitually returned home at night, left her ten-year-old in the care of an older sister, was last seen in defendant’s company, barefoot and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. The victim said17 she was on her way to defendant’s home and would be back by midnight. She was never seen again. Despite needing medication for a thyroid disorder and epilepsy, Ms. Kenyon did not take her medication, her purse, or any identification.
The defendant, who also confessed to two other murders, gave three full confessions. He stated that he had originally buried Ms. Kenyon in the basement of his house and then, next to the alley side of his *567house. A tracker dog in a search for human scent at defendant’s residence led the officer inside a crawl space and an area outside toward the alley, and a witness testified about a hole in the basement that had been dug out and filled in. An exhaustive investigation found no trace of Ms. Kenyon at the morgue or hospitals, and no contact with governmental agencies; her Aid to Dependent Children and Medicaid checks went uncollected.
Analyzing the issue under the Opper approach,18 there is independent evidence corroborating the recanted confession. There is no claim that the confession was other than voluntary, given freely after full advice of rights. There is no suggestion of any mental illness or other mental impairment. The defendant’s statement that he left the apartment with the deceased was corroborated by her daughter, his statement that they went to his residence was corroborated by the victim’s having given her daughter directions to get there, his statement that he placed her body in the dumpster was corroborated by the fact that it was never found, and his statement that he had previously buried her in the basement and in the yard is corroborated respectively by a filled-in hole and a dog’s scenting at the fence area.
*568CONCLUSION
The reasons and the means causing Carolyn Kenyon’s death are not a mystery. The defendant killed her, and, whether viewed through the prism of the common-law rule or the trustworthiness test, his voluntary statement, given after full advice of constitutional rights, was admissible to establish that fact. As this case demonstrates, the common-law corpus delicti rule operates to shield a recanting defendant cunning enough to destroy a body or conceal its identity, despite a voluntary and reliable confession to the crime. That price is too high. The rule should be abandoned, and the Court should adopt the federal trustworthiness rule. This approach continues to accord to recanted confessions a unique evidentiary status, while addressing the aberrational effect of the common-law rule.
I would reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals.
Riley and Weaver, JJ., concurred with Boyle, J.

 People v Allen, 390 Mich 383; 212 NW2d 21 (1973); People v Williams, 422 Mich 381; 373 NW2d 567 (1985). In Williams, the Court rejected the claim that all essential elements of the crime were the corpus of first-degree premeditated murder.

 United States v Kerley, 838 F2d 932, 939 (CA 7, 1988) (Posner, J.).

 Mullen, Rule without reason: Requiring independent proof of the corpus delicti as a condition of admitting an extrajudicial confession, 27USFLR385, 401 (1993).

 McLaughlin instructed that a delay exceeding forty-eight hours presumptively violates the Fourth Amendment. Powell v Nevada, 511 US 79, 114 S Ct 1280, 1283; 128 L Ed 2d 1 (1994).

 Commonwealth v Forde, 392 Mass 453, 457-458; 466 NE2d 510 (1984); State v Yoshida, 44 Hawaii 352, 356-358; 354 P2d 986 (1960); State v Weldon, 6 Utah 2d 372, 375-376; 314 P2d 353 (1957).

 Mullen, Rule without reason, supra at 398, points out that if the purpose is to provide protection to those of limited mental capability, the rule should logically require independent evidence of the identity of the defendant as the person who committed the crime, which would require proof of the entire crime, a definition characterized by Wigmore as “absurd.” See Perkins, The corpus delicti of murder, 48 Va L R 173, 181 (1962).

 As pointed out, the common-law rule is particularly onerous as a barrier to prosecution in cases involving child abuse or infanticide in which independent evidence may be “virtually unattainable.” Comment, Reevaluation of the California corpus delicti rule: A response to the invitation of proposition 8, 78 Cal L R 1571, 1582 (1990). See People v Kirby, 223 Mich 440, 459; 194 NW 142 (1923) (Sharpe, X, dissenting).

 1 McCormick, Evidence (4th ed), § 145, p 564.

 Escobedo v Illinois, 378 US 478; 84 S Ct 1758; 12 L Ed 2d 977 (1964).

 Note, Confession corroboration in New York: A replacement for the corpus delicti rule, 46 Fordham L R 1205 (1978); Developments in the law: Confessions, 79 Harv L R 935, 945-955 (1966); comment, California’s corpus delicti rule: The case for review and clarification, 20 UCLA L R 1055 (1973).

 Furthermore, it protects a defendant in the case in which a dishonest police officer, a self-interested accomplice, or a malicious enemy seeks to frame an innocent defendant by fabricating a story that the defendant confessed to committing an actual crime.

 The defendant is entitled to litigate the reliability and believability of the confession following the determination that it was lawfully obtained. People v Walker (On Rehearing), 374 Mich 331; 132 NW2d 87 (1965).

 Whatever support there may be in prior cases of this Court for the view that the corpus delicti is loss plus criminal agency, the prosecution correctly points out that there is no support for the conclusion that the corpus delicti equates to all elements of the offense.

 7 Wigmore, Evidence (Chadbourn rev), § 2072, pp 524-525.

 As of 1993, four states required proof of only loss or harm, Mullen, supra, p 389, as outlined by the Wigmore approach to corpus delicti, see 7 Wigmore, n 14 supra, § 2072, p 524.

 That the msgority’s concern is assuaged in this case by the fact that defendant stands convicted of two other charges of murder, provides neither a future level of comfort for this Court, nor redress for the family of this victim.

 The Rules of Evidence do not apply to a threshold determination of admissibility. MRE 104(a).

 Without reference to the confession, a circumstantial inference to be drawn from these facts is that it is more likely that Ms. Kenyon is dead than that she has voluntarily absented herself. There is evidence pointing to a healthy state of mind and the prosecutor introduced evidence showing that a body was not found in the places to be expected if the deceased had died accidentally or by her own hand. Although we do not analyze the case under the common-law corpus delicti rule, it would appear that the confession would be admissible because the absence of a body is consistent with unlawfulness in causing the injury in question. People v Wise, supra.