Court Opinion

ID: 9849242
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:36:42.772459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:08.732901
License: Public Domain

Judge BECTON
concurring in the result.
Although I do not agree with the position taken in the majority opinion, I nevertheless concur in the result reached. First, I am not convinced that State v. Brown, 308 N.C. 181, 301 S.E. 2d 89 (1983) was wrongly decided. Because of human frailties and limitations, the guilty are sometimes freed and the innocent are sometimes convicted. Thus, implicit in our criminal justice system is the social contract notion that in exchange for our inability to discover the “absolute” truth, we assure criminal defendants that we will provide them as fair a trial as humanly possible. And so the balance won’t be further skewed by whatever inherent advan*17tage the State may have, we give criminal defendants certain procedural rights, we place the burden of proof on the State, and we give the defendant an absolute right not to testify or present a defense. Had Brown been decided differently, defendants would be pressured to take the stand in many instances to explain their insolubly ambiguous statements or testify that their allegedly criminal acts resulted from negligence or accident. This the law does not require.
Second, while Brown may be distinguishable from the case at bar when one considers wilfulness or intent necessary for a conviction in Brown, I believe it to be a distinction without a difference on the facts of this case. Defendant’s extrajudicial confession cannot be used absent either (1) independent evidence of the corpus delicti, or (2) both independent evidence of the trustworthiness of the confession and a showing of criminality on the part of the defendant.
The State’s proof regarding the location of the accident and the fact that defendant’s father came to the scene with defendant is not determinative. State v. Franklin, 308 N.C. 682, 693, 304 S.E. 2d 579, 586 (1983), requires more than “proof of facts and circumstances which add credibility to the confession and generate a belief in its trustworthiness.” Franklin states that in addition there must be “independent proof of death, injury, or damage, as the case may require, by criminal means . . . [before] [elements of the offense may ... be proved through the statements of the accused.” Id. The fact that the accident happened farther down Stradley Mountain Road from where (if you use defendant’s confession) defendant had attended a party in no way enhances the trustworthiness of defendant’s confession as to driving the car. Further, the presence of defendant’s father at the scene is not independent evidence of the corpus delicti or of defendant’s criminality. It only shows that defendant knew or learned of the accident and went to the scene with his father.
Had Mr. Hall been able to identify defendant as the person who ran from the car, or had one of the presumably several people at the party farther up Stradley Mountain Road testified that defendant left the party driving the car shortly before it overturned, defendant’s conviction could have been sustained. On the facts of this case, the State failed to carry its burden or to estab*18lish that this case is sufficiently distinguishable from Brown to permit me to uphold defendant’s conviction.