Corpus Delecti Rule

In Defense of the Corpus Delicti Rule
DAVID A. MORAN*
The common law corpus delicti rule prohibits the admission of an extrajudicial
confession into evidence in a criminal case unless the prosecution introduces
some evidence independent of the confession that the crime described in the
confession actually occurred. This venerable rule, designed to prevent the
conviction of the coerced and the mentally unstable for fictitious crimes, has
come under increasing scholarly criticism in the past fifty years, and a small but
growing number of jurisdictions have repealed the rule.
The author argues that the corpus delicti rule is worth retaining because it
serves its purpose of preventing wrongful convictions in that small class of cases
in which there is not independent evidence of criminality. Using a recent case
from Michigan, the author demonstrates that more modern confession doctrines,
such as due process voluntariness and Miranda, cannot adequately protect
against such wrongful convictions, especially since the Supreme Court has held
that these doctrines are not designed to prevent the admission of unreliable
confessions.
I. INTRODUCTION
The common law corpus delicti rule prohibits the introduction of an

extrajudicial confession in a criminal case unless the prosecution introduces
independent evidence of the “corpus delicti.”1 That is, the prosecution must
introduce some evidence independent of the confession to establish that the crime
described in the confession actually occurred.2
The corpus delicti rule was first developed more than three hundred years ago
in England to prevent the conviction of those who confessed to non-existent
crimes as a result of coercion or mental illness.3 By the end of the nineteenth
century, the corpus delicti rule had been adopted in some form by almost all
American jurisdictions.4
* Assistant Professor, Wayne State University Law School, Detroit, Michigan. I gratefully
acknowledge the research assistance of one of my students, Carmen Moyer, and the helpful
comments of my colleagues at Wayne State.
1 Literally, the “body of the crime.” BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY 346 (7th ed. 1999).
2 This common formulation of the corpus delicti rule encompasses two elements: (1) that a
specific injury or loss occurred; and (2) that someone’s criminality (as opposed to, for example,
an accident or a natural phenomenon) caused the injury or loss. See 7 JOHN H. WIGMORE,
EVIDENCE IN TRIAL AT COMMON LAW § 2072, at 524 (James H. Chadmore ed., 1978).
3 See 2 MATTHEW HALE, PLEAS OF THE CROWN 290 (1678) (“I would never convict any
person of murder or manslaughter, unless the fact were proven to be done, or at least the body
found dead.”). The English genesis of the corpus delicti rule is discussed more fully in Part II of
this article.
4 See 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2071, at 511–16 (collecting cases).
818 OHIO STATE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 64:817
The corpus delicti rule has fallen into disfavor in recent decades. In the last
fifty years, the federal courts and at least ten states have abolished the rule and
replaced it with a weaker “corroboration” rule that requires the prosecution to
merely bolster the confession by some independent evidence, even if that
independent evidence does not establish that any crime has occurred.5 Many
scholars have applauded and encouraged this judicial trend toward abolition of
the rule.6
The judicial and scholarly attacks on the corpus delicti rule typically fall into
several broad categories. Some critics claim the rule is overbroad; that is, since an
extrajudicial confession unsupported by independent evidence must be
suppressed regardless of the defendant’s mental state or the circumstances under
which she made the confession, the critics argue that the rule must inevitably
result in the suppression of reliable confessions.7 On the other hand, some critics
attack the rule as inadequate to achieve its core purposes because it provides no
protection to even the most patently mentally ill or coerced defendant who
confesses, however implausibly, to an actual crime.8
By far the most common criticism of the rule, however, is that modern
constitutional confession doctrines have rendered the rule obsolete. In particular,
5 See Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 93 (1954) (adopting corroboration rule for
federal courts). For a list of state cases rejecting the corpus delicti rule, see infra note 102.
6 See, e.g., 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2070, at 510 (“The policy of any rule of the sort is
questionable.”); 1 MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 145, at 563–64 (4th ed. 1992) (criticizing rule
as ineffective and duplicative of other confession doctrines); Thomas A. Mullen, Rule Without
Reason: Requiring Independent Proof of the Corpus Delicti as a Condition of Admitting an
Extrajudicial Confession, 27 U.S.F. L. REV. 385, 418 (1993) (concluding that “[a]ll forms of
the corpus delicti rule should be abolished, including the corroboration requirement”); Maria
Lisa Crisera, Comment, Reevaluation of the California Corpus Delicti Rule: A Response to the
Invitation of Proposition 8, 78 CAL. L. REV. 1571, 1596–97 (1990) (arguing that California
should replace the corpus delicti rule with a corroboration requirement); Catherine L.
Goldenberg, Comment, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as a Mask for Murder: Investigating
and Prosecuting Infanticide, 28 SW. U. L. REV. 599, 612–22 (1999) (arguing that corpus delicti
rule hinders prosecutions of infanticide).
7 See, e.g., 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2070, at 510 (arguing that false confessions of
guilt are “exceedingly rare” and that, therefore, the corpus delicti rule is often “a positive
obstruction to the course of justice”); Mullen, supra note 6, at 415 (“Literal compliance with the
corpus delicti rule sometimes results in unsuccessful prosecutions of admittedly guilty
people.”); Crisera, supra note 6, at 1582–83 (“As long as [the corpus delicti rule] exists, it can
be abused to keep perfectly reliable extrajudicial confessions out of evidence.”); Goldenberg,
supra note 6, at 618–19 (complaining that independent proof of infanticide is nearly impossible
to obtain).
8 See, e.g., Mullen, supra note 6, at 405 (complaining that the rule “does not block the
admission of dubious confessions if the prosecution meets a low threshold of evidence
supporting the occurrence of the crime”); People v. McMahan, 548 N.W.2d 199, 205 (Mich.
1996) (Boyle, J. dissenting) (“[T]he 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.”).
2003] IN DEFENSE OF THE CORPUS DELICTI RULE 819
these critics argue that the due process9 voluntariness doctrine and the Fifth
Amendment protections of Miranda v. Arizona10 have largely eliminated coerced
and unreliable confessions.11
In this article, I will defend the corpus delicti rule against these criticisms.
Specifically, I will argue that the rule well serves the desirable purpose of
precluding conviction in the rare case where the defendant’s confession is so
unreliable that there is little or no evidence other than the confession that a crime
has occurred at all. Since centuries of experience, as well as recent DNA
exonerations, have confirmed that juries all too frequently convict the innocent
based entirely on uncorroborated and unreliable confessions, the corpus delicti
rule is beneficial even though it is limited to those unusual cases. The rule’s cost
is the possible exclusion of a true confession, but I shall argue that a confession
that cannot be corroborated even to the extent of establishing that a crime has
occurred is always insufficiently reliable to justify a conviction.
I shall also argue in some detail that the corpus delicti rule remains necessary
today despite the existence of modern constitutional confession doctrines. It is
true that the Miranda doctrine limits the coercion inherent in custodial police
interrogation, but Miranda does nothing to protect the mentally unstable suspect
who confesses in a non-custodial setting or after waiving her Miranda rights. The
due process voluntariness doctrine also does not adequately protect against
confessions to non-existent crimes because the Supreme Court has explicitly
decoupled the voluntariness of a confession from its reliability. Thus, in Colorado
v. Connelly,12 the Court held that the admission of a patently unreliable
confession from a deranged defendant does not violate due process so long as the
confession was not obtained through governmental “overreaching.”13
Therefore, neither Miranda nor the due process voluntariness doctrine
prevents the government from basing a conviction entirely upon an unreliable
confession extracted from a mentally ill, intoxicated, or weak-minded suspect so
long as the police do not violate the Miranda rules and do not otherwise
overreach. Since the corpus delicti rule does exclude such confessions when the
government cannot independently prove the existence of the alleged crime, the
rule retains its value as a guard against wrongful convictions.
9 U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1.

10 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966).
11 See, e.g., 1 MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra note 6, § 145, at 563 (“Given the
development of other confession law doctrines, especially Fifth Amendment protections as
promulgated in Miranda and the voluntariness requirement, concerns regarding law
enforcement interrogation practices do not provide significant support for the corroboration
requirement.”); Mullen, supra note 6, at 404 (“If the need to avoid involuntary confessions ever
had any force as a rationale for the corpus delicti rule, that force has been dissipated by United
States Supreme Court decisions limiting the admissibility of questionable confessions.”).
12 479 U.S. 157 (1986).
13 Id. at 164.
In Part I of this article, I will set the stage for my defense of the corpus delicti
rule by describing a recent unpublished case, People v. McAllister,14 in which a
mentally disturbed woman was condemned to spend the rest of her life in prison
for “committing” an apparently fictitious murder. In particular, I will use the
McAllister case throughout this article to show how the corpus delicti rule can
prevent miscarriages of justice in cases to which other confession doctrines do not
apply at all.
I will demonstrate in Part II that these are the same types of cases that
prompted the historical development of the corpus delicti rule in seventeenth
century England and its transplantation to the United States in the early nineteenth
century. I will then discuss the recent judicial trend toward abolishing or
weakening the rule.
In Part III, I will set forth the scholarly attacks of the corpus delicti rule that
have supported the recent abolition trend, and I will answer those attacks and
defend the rule. In so arguing, I will devote considerable space to showing that
modern constitutional confession doctrines cannot replace the corpus delicti rule
in protecting the most vulnerable suspects from being convicted entirely on the
basis of delusional confessions. I will also show why the weaker “corroboration”
rule that applies in the federal courts and several states is an inadequate substitute
for the corpus delicti rule.
II. A MODERN CORPUS DELICTI CASE: PEOPLE V. MCALLISTER
To understand why the corpus delicti rule remains necessary more than three
hundred years after it was first developed, consider the very strange case of Dawn
Marie McAllister.15
A. The Death of an Infant and a Mother’s Descent into Madness
In 1989, Dawn McAllister lived with her boyfriend, Michael Blackburn, and
her two boys, two-year-old Dustin and four-month-old Daniel, in her parents’
home in a small town in central Michigan. On the evening of May 20, 1989,
McAllister’s mother, Alice, put the two boys to bed between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00
p.m.16 At 3:00 a.m., Alice checked on her grandsons on her way to bed, and she
saw Daniel move his hands.17 At 4:25 a.m., McAllister, who had fallen asleep in
front of the television with Blackburn, was awakened by her father, Stanley, who
14 No. 155392, slip op. (Mich. Ct. App. July 27, 1994).
15 As a former staff attorney at the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office, I
represented Ms. McAllister on the direct appeal of her murder conviction in the Michigan Court
of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court. The complete trial and appellate records of the
McAllister case are available upon request from my files.
16 McAllister, No. 155392, slip op. at 1.
17 Id.
had arrived home from work.18 McAllister looked in on her boys for less than a
minute and then went to bed.19
At 9:00 a.m., Blackburn, who had remained asleep in front of the television
was awakened by Dustin’s crying.20 Blackburn entered McAllister’s bedroom,
woke her up, and told her to check on her children.21 McAllister then went into
her boys’ bedroom, picked up Daniel, and screamed that he was not breathing.22
Blackburn and Stanley McAllister attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation and
called for an ambulance.23
Daniel McAllister was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital at 9:44
24
a.m. The attending physician estimated that Daniel had been dead for
approximately six hours.25
A pathologist and the local medical examiner performed an autopsy, and each
concluded that Daniel had died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).26
Both physicians agreed that they found no evidence of criminality or any kind of
trauma to Daniel, and both agreed that Daniel’s death appeared to be a typical
case of SIDS, the leading killer of infants between one week and one year of
age.27 One of the physicians discovered during that autopsy that Daniel was
congested from a respiratory infection and concluded that the infection may have
precipitated Daniel’s death.28 Having found “absolutely” no evidence of foul
play, the medical examiner issued a death certificate listing SIDS as the cause of
death.29
18 Id.
19 Id.
20 Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 42–44, People v. McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (Shiawassee,
Mich. Cir. Ct. 1992) (testimony of Michael Blackburn).
21 Id. at 46.
22 Id.
23 Id.
24 McAllister, No. 155392, slip op. at 1.
25 Id.
26 Id. at 1–3.
27 Id. at 2. One of the doctors explained that Daniel was especially at risk as SIDS most
frequently occurs between two and four months of age and is more common in male infants. Id.
28 Id. at 3–4. The other physician believed it was unlikely the infection had contributed to
the death. Id. at 3. Three witnesses testified at the trial that McAllister had taken Daniel to a
clinic three days before his death because he was very congested and having difficulty
breathing. Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 71, 81–83, 92, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (testimony of
Alice McAllister); id. Vol. 3, at 46–50 (testimony of Sharee Buning); id. at 53–54 (testimony of
Mary McPherson). A public health nurse testified that she visited Daniel eight times in the three
months before his death and had become very concerned about Daniel’s breathing problems. Id.
at 181–88 (testimony of Florence Manning).
29 Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 104–77, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (testimony of Dr. Fred
Van Alstine).
Dawn McAllister, who already had a long history of mental illness, took a
dramatic turn for the worse after Daniel’s death. In December 1990, McAllister
was hospitalized at a psychiatric institution for the seventh time after she reported
hallucinations involving bugs and snakes.30 The treating psychiatrist concluded
that McAllister suffered from multiple personality disorder, atypical psychosis,
and a panic disorder.31
During this hospitalization, McAllister also told her psychiatrist that she had
been a member of a Satanic cult years earlier in which she and other cult
members had sacrificed babies.32 The psychiatrist then contacted the Michigan
State Police and arranged for an officer to interview her.33
During that interview with the state police, McAllister told the officer that she
had given birth to a boy named “Nicholas” in 1982 or 1983, that she was a
member of a Satanic cult that had sacrificed several babies, including “Nicholas,”
and that she and other cult members ate the babies’ flesh and drank their blood.34
The officer never believed these bizarre stories, and his investigation confirmed
that McAllister never had a child in the early 1980s and that the places she
described did not exist.35
McAllister’s baby-sacrificing Satanic cult story was not atypical, given her
psychiatric history. A year before Daniel’s death, she filed a “totally false”
complaint with the local police,36 she claimed after Daniel’s death that her mother
had killed Daniel in a Satanic ritual,37 and she told a minister that she was hearing
voices that were telling her that she had killed Daniel.38 Two of the mental health
professionals who examined McAllister confirmed that her condition caused her
to fabricate stories that were out of touch with reality.39
30 Trial Transcript, Vol. 3, at 63, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (testimony of Dr. Donald
Jacobson).
31 Id. at 61–63, 89–90, 98–99. A psychologist who treated McAllister for two years after
Daniel’s death rejected the multiple personality disorder diagnosis and instead concluded that
McAllister suffered from borderline personality disorder. Id. at 108–12 (testimony of Dr. Judith
Hovey). A psychiatrist who examined McAllister after she was arrested in November 1991
agreed that McAllister had borderline personality disorder. Id. at 120–26 (testimony of Dr.
Carol Holden).
32 Id. at 69–72 (testimony of Dr. Donald Jacobson).
33 Id. at 73.
34 Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 30–32, 37–38, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (testimony of
Officer Gary Peterson).
35 Id. at 33–34, 39.
36 Trial Transcript, Vol. 3, at 8, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (offer of proof of testimony
of Detective Victor Wasylyshyn).
37 Id. at 29 (testimony of Robert Hoschner).
38 Id. at 34, 37 (testimony of Reverend Paul Castle).
39 See id. at 110 (testimony of Dr. Judith Hovey) (stating that McAllister told stories that
were “distortions of reality”); id. at 126 (testimony of Dr. Carol Holden) (testifying that
It is this quality that made Dawn McAllister such an easy defendant to

convict.
B. How To Win a Murder Case with Nothing but a Confession
After discrediting McAllister’s Satanic sacrifice story, the Michigan State

Police arranged for McAllister to be interrogated by Sergeant John Palmatier, a
police detective with doctorate-level training in psychology.40 Palmatier later
explained that he had been interested in the case since Daniel’s death two years
earlier because he believes that many, if not most, SIDS cases are actually
maternal homicides.41
Having an experienced and aggressive interrogator like Sergeant Palmatier
question a woman like McAllister was certainly overkill. At the time of
McAllister’s interrogation, Palmatier was best known in Michigan for an eight-
hour-long videotaped interrogation of a murder suspect during which Palmatier
used hypnotic techniques to place the suspect in a trancelike state.42
Getting McAllister to submit to an interrogation was easy. In September
1991, after McAllister had repeated her claim that her mother had killed Daniel
two years earlier, a police detective urged McAllister and her mother to take
polygraph examinations.43 After McAllister arrived at State Police headquarters
for her “polygraph examination,” she was ushered into an interrogation room with
Sergeant Palmatier. Palmatier did not videotape his interrogation of McAllister
even though he set up a video camera so another detective could watch the
interrogation from another room.44
It took one hour and forty-five minutes for Palmatier to extract a confession
from McAllister.45 Palmatier told McAllister that “he felt that she had something
to do with the death of the baby, Daniel,”46 and suggested that she had killed
McAllister “seemed to tell people either what she though they wanted to hear or what she
thought would get her the most attention”).
40 Suppression Hearing, Transcript at 63, 72, People v. McAllister, No. 92-6589FC
(Shiawassee, Mich. Cir. Ct. June 5, 1992) (testimony of John Palmatier).
41 Id. at 74–77.
42 See generally People v. DeLisle, 455 N.W.2d 401, 402 (Mich. Ct. App. 1990)
(upholding trial court’s finding that confession was involuntary product of Palmatier’s
psychological techniques).
43 People v. McAllister, No. 155392, slip op. at 1 (Mich. Ct. App. July 27, 1994).
44 Suppression Hearing, Transcript, at 14–15, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (testimony of
Gail Van Lopik). Palmatier’s decision not to videotape the interrogation is not surprising since
the videotape in the DeLisle case had been used to prove that his tactics amounted to
psychological coercion. See DeLisle, supra note 42.
45 Suppression Hearing, Transcript, at 16, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC.
46 Id.
Daniel to stop him from crying.47 McAllister finally responded by nodding her
head.48 The other detective then entered the room, read McAllister the Miranda
warnings, and asked her to provide a written statement.49 After McAllister
produced a written statement, in which she claimed that she had smothered Daniel
with a blanket to stop him from crying, she was allowed to leave.50
McAllister was arrested three days later and charged with murder. After she
was placed in a jail cell with several other women, she initially told her cellmates
that she had smothered her baby, but then steadfastly denied it.51
Before trial, McAllister unsuccessfully moved to suppress her inculpatory
statements on both corpus delicti and involuntariness grounds.52 At her trial,
therefore, the prosecution introduced McAllister’s police statement and the
statement to her cellmates as the only evidence that Daniel McAllister had died
from anything other than natural causes.
The pathologist and the medical examiner who had performed the autopsy
not only testified during the trial that Daniel had, in their opinion, died of SIDS
but also that all physical signs of intentional suffocation that one would expect to
find were completely absent from the autopsy.53 While McAllister’s statement
recited that she had killed Daniel to stop his crying, none of the adults in the
house on the night of Daniel’s death heard any crying.54 No physical evidence of
any kind was introduced to substantiate the prosecution’s claim that Daniel had
47 Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 161, People v. McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (Shiawassee,

Mich. Cir. Ct. 1992) (testimony of John Palmatier).
48 Id. at 161.
49 Suppression Hearing, Transcript, at 18–21, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (testimony of
Gail Van Lopik).
50 Id. at 22–23; Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 183–88, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC
(testimony of Gail Van Lopik).
51 Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 148, 153–54, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (testimony of
Kimberly Garries); id. at 202–03 (testimony of Jo Ann Gray). A third cellmate claimed that
McAllister had admitted killing Daniel while “getting high” with “a couple of friends.” Id. at
214, 218 (testimony of Angela Perkins).
52 The trial judge rejected the corpus delicti claim in a written order in which he concluded
that “there was sufficient independent evidence to establish that a death resulted because of a
criminal agency.” People v. McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (Shiawassee, Mich. Cir. Ct. June 1,
1992) (order denying motion to suppress confession). The order does not identify any such
independent evidence. The trial judge orally rejected the voluntariness claim after crediting the
officers’ testimony that McAllister had behaved appropriately during the interrogation.
Suppression Hearing, Transcript, at 89, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC.
53 See People v. McAllister, No. 155392, slip op. at 2–3 (Mich. Ct. App. July 27, 1994)
(describing trial testimony of Dr. Christopher Wiseman and Dr. Fred Van Alstine).
54 For example, Michael Blackburn testified that he would have heard Daniel crying from
the place he was sleeping, but he did not hear any crying until Daniel’s brother, Dustin, woke
him up the next morning. Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 56, McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC
(testimony of Michael Blackburn).
been murdered, but numerous witnesses testified that Daniel was a sickly infant
with a history of respiratory problems.55
In short, the only evidence that Daniel had been murdered was the police
statement McAllister signed at police headquarters and the initial statement that
she made to her cellmates. But that was enough. The jury convicted McAllister of
second-degree murder, and she was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in
prison.
C. Undoing an Injustice with the Corpus Delicti Rule
Two years later, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned McAllister’s

conviction because the admission of her inculpatory statements violated the
corpus delicti rule.56 Since the prosecution could not establish the corpus delicti
of homicide independent of McAllister’s statements, the Court of Appeals
ordered that a directed verdict of not guilty be entered.57
McAllister was a straightforward corpus delicti case. In a homicide case, the
appellate court observed, the corpus delicti rule requires the prosecution to
establish, by a preponderance of the evidence independent of the defendant’s
statements, that “the victim is dead as a result of some criminal agency.”58 Since
there was no evidence that Daniel died from foul play other than McAllister’s
statements, the prosecution could not establish the corpus delicti. The statements,
therefore, should not have been admitted, and without the statements there was no
case.
McAllister’s statements were exactly the sort of unreliable evidence that the
corpus delicti rule was designed to exclude. That is, her statements were highly
unreliable under any reasonable criteria as they were extracted by an experienced
police interrogator from a mentally disturbed person with an established history of
fabrication, and they contradicted all other available evidence, including expert
scientific testimony and the testimony of witnesses to the events described in the
confession. The same facts that made McAllister’s statements excludable under
the corpus delicti rule also were the clearest indication that the statements were
unreliable; that is, there was no independent proof that the crime described in the
statements had occurred at all.
What is striking about Dawn McAllister’s case, however, is that she almost
certainly would still be in prison today if Michigan, like several other American
jurisdictions, had followed the recent trend of abolishing the corpus delicti rule.
Without the corpus delicti rule, the admission of her statement, and, therefore, her
conviction, would almost certainly have been upheld.
55 See supra note 28.

56 McAllister, No. 155392, slip op. at 2–4.
57 Id. at 4.
58 Id. at 2 (citing People v. Williams, 373 N.W.2d 567 (Mich. 1985)).
As I will demonstrate in detail in Part III.C of this article, no constitutional

doctrine would have required the suppression of McAllister’s statements. Since
McAllister was not in custody at the time of her interrogation, Miranda had no
application to her case. In light of Colorado v. Connelly,59 the appellate courts
almost certainly would not have found that the admission of McAllister’s
statements violated due process. While it was undisputed that McAllister was
severely mentally ill and vulnerable to suggestion, Connelly holds that such facts
are irrelevant unless there is also evidence of “police overreaching” in the
interrogation. Since McAllister “voluntarily” went to State Police headquarters,
was not in custody, and was questioned for less than two hours, it is difficult to
imagine that any appellate court could find her statement involuntary. After
Connelly, the fact that the statement is patently unreliable and contradicts
objective reality is simply irrelevant to the voluntariness inquiry.
As I will show in Part III.D of this article, the “corroboration” or
“trustworthiness” standards that some jurisdictions have adopted in lieu of the
corpus delicti rule would not have helped McAllister either. The prosecution
probably would have been able to meet those standards simply by showing that
she repeated her statements, that several officers overheard them, and that some
facts in the statements were true.
Without the corpus delicti rule, Dawn McAllister’s confession would have
been fully admissible, and her conviction presumably would have been upheld.
McAllister thus serves as a perfect example of the admittedly rare case for which
the corpus delicti rule still serves its historical function of preventing the wrongful
conviction of a mentally ill or otherwise weak-minded defendant who has
confessed to a fictitious crime. Since, as I will show below, the critics have failed
to demonstrate any significant costs associated with retaining the rule, the corpus
delicti rule is well worth keeping.
III. THE VENERABLE ORIGINS OF A STRANGE DOCTRINE: A BRIEF HISTORY

OF THE CORPUS DELICTI RULE
To see how a modern case such as McAllister presents exactly the sort of
danger the corpus delicti rule was designed to prevent, it is important to
understand why the rule was developed in the first place. For that, we must turn to
seventeenth century England.
A. The Early English Cases
Most scholars agree that the impetus for the corpus delicti rule traces to
several seventeenth century English cases in which defendants were executed for
59 479 U.S. 157 (1986).

murders of missing “victims” who later turned out to be very much alive.60 Lord
Hale cited two such cases in his 1678 treatise, Pleas of the Crown, in support of
his pronouncement that: “I would never convict any person of murder or
manslaughter, unless the fact were proven to be done, or at least the body found
dead.”61 In Hale’s first case, a man was convicted for murdering his young niece,
who had last been seen begging for her life as he was physically punishing her.62
The niece, as it turns out, had actually run away after the beating. Unfortunately,
this fact became clear only when she returned home to claim her inheritance after
her uncle had already been executed.63
In Hale’s second case, a man, “B,” was convicted of murdering another man,
“A,” who had disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Less than a year after
B’s execution, A returned home with the explanation that B had forcibly sent him
overseas.64
Even though Hale is often cited as the principal source for the corpus delicti
rule,65 the rule, at least as it is applied today in American courts, would not have
prevented the wrongful convictions in either of his two cases. As several modern
commentators have noted, the corpus delicti rule would not apply to Hale’s cases
at all because neither the uncle nor B ever confessed.66 Further, even if the uncle
and B had confessed, those confessions might still have been admissible as there
was apparently at least some independent evidence in each case that the person
who disappeared had been murdered.67
60 See, e.g., Mullen, supra note 6, at 399; Rollin M. Perkins, The Corpus Delicti of
Murder, 48 VA. L. REV. 173, 173–75 (1962). At least one author has claimed that the corpus
delicti rule traces back to the 13th century. Emanuel Margolis, Corpus Delicti: State of the
Disunion, 2 SUFFOLK U. L. REV. 44, 46 (1968). However, the only authority cited for this earlier
claim relates to the self-incrimination privilege, not the corpus delicti rule. See id. at 46 n.15.
61 See 2 HALE, supra note 3, at 290.
62 Id. at 290 note g.
63 Id.
64 Id. at 290. Hale ends his account of this unfortunate episode with the gratuitous
observation that since B had involuntarily deported A, B “justly deserved death, yet he was
really not guilty of that offense, for which he suffered.” Id.
65 See, e.g., Mullen, supra note 6, at 399 n.70.
66 See Perkins, supra note 60, at 174; Mullen, supra note 6, at 399–400.
67 In a murder case, the corpus delicti consists of proof that the alleged victim is actually
dead and that his death was caused by a criminal agency. Perkins, supra note 60, at 181.
Circumstantial evidence concerning the alleged victim’s disappearance may satisfy the corpus
delicti rule. For example, in United States v. Williams, 28 F. Cas. 636 (No. 16707) (C.C.D. Me.
1858), the court upheld the convictions of three seamen who had confessed to killing their
crewmates on a ship, even though the ship and the crewmates were never found, by relying on
circumstantial evidence that the seamen had carefully planned their evacuation from the ship.
As for the uncle mentioned by Hale, the testimony that the niece was last seen begging for her
life during a beating could constitute sufficient independent evidence that she had been
murdered. In B’s case, Hale explained that “A. was long missing, and upon strong
In other words, Hale did not actually propose the corpus delicti rule, and the
corpus delicti rule would not have affected the cases he mentioned. What Hale
did propose was a rule requiring the prosecution to produce the victim’s body in a
homicide case, a requirement that the common law has never accepted.68
Ironically, another missing victim case that does actually support the corpus
delicti rule, Perrys’ Case,69 came to light just a few years before Pleas of the
Crown was published, but Hale was apparently unaware of it. One day in 1660,
an elderly Gloucestershire man named William Harrison disappeared as he made
his rounds to collect rents for his employer.70 After some of Harrison’s personal
possessions were found on the highway, suspicion fell upon his servant, John
Perry.71 Taken into custody and repeatedly interrogated by a justice of the peace,
Perry initially denied any wrongdoing.72 As the interrogations continued,
however, Perry eventually changed his story and claimed that he, his mother, and
his brother had robbed and murdered Harrison and that they had dumped the body
in a swamp.73 Even though searchers failed to find Harrison’s body in the swamp
and even though Perry’s mother and brother vigorously denied Perry’s story,
Perry, his mother, and his brother were convicted and executed entirely on the
strength of Perry’s confession.74
Some years after the unfortunate Perrys had been executed, Harrison returned
home to Gloucestershire. In a letter to a local knight, Harrison explained that he
had been kidnapped, shipped to Turkey, and sold into slavery, and that he had
eventually escaped and returned to England.75
Perrys’ Case, unlike the cases Hale cited, is a true corpus delicti case, a case
in which an uncorroborated confession to a non-existent crime was admitted into
evidence. Indeed, the report of Perrys’ Case specifically recognized that Perry’s
false confession caused the miscarriage of justice: “Many question the truth of
this account Mr. Harrison gives of himself, and his transportation, believing he
was never out of England; but there is no question of Perry’s telling a formal false
presumptions B. was supposed to have murdered him, and to have consumed him to ashes in an
oven, that he should not be found.” See 2 HALE, supra note 3, at 290. If the circumstances of
A’s disappearance (or B’s oven) were sufficiently suspicious to amount to independent
evidence that A had been murdered, the corpus delicti rule would not exclude a confession.
68 See Perkins, supra note 60, at 182–83 (citation omitted). Justice Story once pointed out
that such a rule “would amount to a universal condonation of all murders committed on the
high seas.” Id. (citing United States v. Gilbert, 25 F. Cas. 1287, 1290 (No. 15204) (C.C.D.
Mass. 1834).
69 14 HOWELL ST. TR. 1312 (1661).
70 Id. at 1313.
71 Id. at 1314.
72 Id. at 1314–15.
73 Id. at 1315–16.
74 Id. at 1317–19.
75 Perrys’ Case, 14 HOWELL ST. TR. at 1319–22.
story to hang himself, his mother and his brother.”76 Thus, some commentators
have suggested that the corpus delicti rule was developed, at least in part, in
reaction to Perrys’ Case.77
Even though the corpus delicti rule derives from English cases, it never
actually became a part of the English common law.78 As Professor Wigmore has
demonstrated, English courts issued confusing and contradictory rulings on the
subject throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the rule applies
today in England, if at all, only in homicide cases.79
B. The Nineteenth Century Rise of the Corpus Delicti Rule in the

United States
Nineteenth-century American courts turned out to be much more receptive

than their English counterparts to the corpus delicti rule. Although the reasons for
the disparity are not completely clear, it appears that a widely-publicized
American version of Perrys’ Case has much to do with the rule’s success on this
side of the Atlantic.80
In May 1812, Russel Colvin suddenly disappeared from his home in
Manchester, Vermont. As years went by with no sign of Colvin, the townspeople
began to suspect foul play, particularly since Jesse and Stephen Boorn, Colvin’s
brothers-in-law, were known to have disliked Colvin and had spoken “strangely”
of his disappearance.81 Finally in 1819, after some bones, initially thought to be
human, were found near the Boorn home, Jesse was arrested.82
While in custody, Jesse claimed that his brother, Stephen, had killed
Colvin.83 Stephen, who by this time had moved to New York, was then arrested
76 Id. at 1323.
77 See, e.g., J. Terry Schwarz, Comment, California’s Corpus Delicti Rule: The Case for
Review and Clarification, 20 UCLA L. REV. 1055, 1060–61 (1973); see also Perkins, supra
note 60, at 174–75.
78 As the Supreme Court put it in Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84 (1954), “[English]
courts have been hesitant to lay down a rule that an uncorroborated extrajudicial confession
may not send an accused to prison or to death.” Id. at 89 (footnote omitted).
79 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2070, at 508–10; see also Opper, 348 U.S. at 89 n.5
(noting that “[i]n some cases a person may be convicted [in England] on his own
[uncorroborated] confession,” but that proof of the corpus delicti may be required for
manslaughter).
80 See The Trial of Stephen and Jesse Boorn, 6 AM. ST. TR. 73 (1819).
81 Id. at 73–74.
82 Id. at 74–75. After Jesse’s arrest, four physicians examined the bones and unanimously
concluded that they were not human. Id. at 75.
83 Id. at 75.
and brought back to Vermont.84 Although Stephen initially denied killing Colvin,
he eventually confessed after he was told that the evidence against him was
overwhelming and that a confession was his only hope to avoid the death
penalty.85
During the Boorns’ trial before the Vermont Supreme Court, the prosecution
introduced no evidence that Colvin had been murdered except for the brothers’
confessions, while the defense claimed that the confessions were the product of
undue pressure.86 The jury quickly convicted the Boorns, and the Chief Justice
condemned both brothers to hang.87 The Vermont Legislature commuted Jesse’s
sentence to life imprisonment but confirmed Stephen’s death sentence.88
In a last ditch attempt to save Stephen Boorn’s life, his attorney placed a
notice in a local newspaper for information as to Colvin’s whereabouts.89 The
New York Evening Post reprinted the notice a few days later, and, after
overhearing several men discussing the notice in a New York hotel, one Tabor
Chadwick became convinced that a deranged man he had met in New Jersey was
Colvin.90 After Chadwick reported his suspicions to the authorities and to the
New York Evening Post, the man in question, who continued to deny he was
Colvin, was taken back to Vermont, where he was instantly recognized as the
long-missing Russel Colvin.91 The justices of the Vermont Supreme Court
initially refused to believe that Colvin was alive but, just days before Stephen’s
scheduled execution, the court relented and granted the Boorns a new trial.92
Thanks to the persistence of Stephen Boorn’s lawyer and a great deal of luck, the
United States had, by the narrowest of margins, avoided a repeat of the awful
outcome in Perrys’ Case.
The Boorns’ case was heavily publicized93 and apparently influenced, at least
indirectly, the widespread adoption of the corpus delicti rule in the United States.
Some two decades after Stephen Boorn’s close encounter with the gallows,
Professor Greenleaf recounted the Boorns’ case in his classic and influential
84 Id. at 75–76. In addition, another jail inmate claimed that Jesse had confessed to him.
Id. at 76.
85 Id. at 76, 91.
86 The Trial of Stephen and Jesse Boorn, 6 AM. ST. TR. at 76–77.
87 Id. at 77.
88 Id.
89 Id. at 92.
90 Id.
91 Id. at 92–94.
92 The Trial of Stephen and Jesse Boorn, 6 AM. ST. TR. at 94–95. The prosecution
immediately abandoned the case, and the Boorns were set free. Id. at 95.
93 After the New York Evening Post published Chadwick’s letter, New York Mayor
DeWitt Clinton even arranged for the city treasury to pay the expenses of a New Yorker who
had volunteered to travel to New Jersey to investigate whether the man was indeed Russel
Colvin. Id. at 93.
evidence treatise in support of the proposition that “evidence of verbal

confessions of guilt is to be received with great caution.”94 Since the corpus
delicti rule is consistent with this view, Professor Greenleaf wholeheartedly
endorsed it:
In the United States, the prisoner’s confession, when the corpus delicti is not
otherwise proved, has been held insufficient for his conviction; and this opinion
certainly best accords with the humanity of the criminal code, and with the great
degree of caution applied in receiving and weighing the evidence of confessions
in other cases.95
Since, as Professor Wigmore has observed, most American jurisdictions

adopted the corpus delicti rule during the nineteenth century, “chiefly moved, in
all probability, by Professor Greenleaf’s suggestion,”96 it appears that the Boorns’
case had a significant impact on the adoption of the rule in the United States. That
impact turned out to be durable; all American jurisdictions apparently still require
extrajudicial confessions to be corroborated to at least some extent,97 and most
jurisdictions still require that the prosecution independently establish the corpus
delicti.98 As discussed in the next subsection, it is only in recent decades that this
judicial acceptance of the corpus delicti rule has begun to decline.
C. The Recent Erosion of the Rule in the United States
Nearly a half century ago, the United States Supreme Court struck the first
big blow against the corpus delicti rule in Opper v. United States.99 In Opper, the
Court held that independent evidence corroborating a confession need not
establish the corpus delicti at all, but merely must “tend to establish the
trustworthiness of the statement.”100 In a companion case, Smith v. United
94 SIMON GREENLEAF, A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF EVIDENCE § 214, at 297–98 & n.1
(10th ed. 1860).
95 Id. § 217, at 301–02.
96 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2071, at 511 (citation omitted).
97 1 MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra note 6, § 145, at 555.
98 See 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2071, at 516–23 & n. 4 (listing cases from thirty-seven
American states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico); see also infra note 105.
99 348 U.S. 84 (1954).
100 Id. at 93. Opper is an exceedingly strange vehicle for the Court’s holding since the
government unquestionably did establish the corpus delicti independent of Opper’s admissions.
Opper was convicted of paying a federal employee compensation for rendering a governmental
service, a crime requiring the government to prove two elements: (1) Opper payed a federal
employee; and (2) the payment was for a governmental service. Id. at 85, 94. In his admission,
Opper conceded that he had paid money to a federal employee but denied that the payments
were for governmental services. Id. at 88. However, the government proved through substantial
independent evidence both elements of the crime: that Opper had indeed paid the federal
States,101 the Court further explained that, “[a]ll 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.”102
In the last forty years, courts in at least ten states and the District of Columbia
have followed the Supreme Court’s lead in Opper by rejecting or abolishing the
corpus delicti rule in favor of a “corroboration” or “trustworthiness” standard.103
Only two years after Dawn McAllister won her case on corpus delicti grounds in
Michigan, the Michigan Supreme Court came within one vote of abolishing the
employee and that the employee had rendered governmental services to Opper. Id. at 93–94 &
nn.12–13. Since, as the Court put it, the “independent evidence of services and of facts within
the admissions seems adequate to constitute corroboration of petitioner’s extrajudicial
admissions and also establish the corpus delicti,” the Court had no need to reject the corpus
delicti rule in order to uphold Opper’s conviction. Id. at 94 (emphasis added).
101 348 U.S. 147 (1954).
102 Id. at 156 (internal quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted).
103 See generally Armstrong v. State, 502 P.2d 440, 447 (Alaska 1972) (adopting Opper
standard in Alaska); State v. Hafford, 746 A.2d 150, 172–74 (Conn. 2000) (adopting Opper
standard for all types of crimes in Connecticut); Harrison v. United States, 281 A.2d 222, 224–
25 (D.C. 1971) (following Opper standard in the District of Columbia); Gilder v. State, 133
S.E.2d 861, 862–63 (Ga. 1963) (holding that “corroboration of a confession in any material
particular” suffices in Georgia); State v. Yoshida, 354 P.2d 986, 990 (Haw. 1960) (adopting
trustworthiness standard in Hawaii); State v. Urie, 437 P.2d 24, 26–27 (Idaho 1968) (citations
omitted) (holding “slight corroboration will suffice” to admit confession and corroboration need
not establish elements of corpus delicti in Idaho); State v. Hansen, 989 P.2d 338, 346 (Mont.
1999) (citing Opper approvingly and concluding that “the corpus delicti rule outlived its
usefulness,” but noting that the Montana statute, MONT. CODE ANN. § 45-5-111, requires
continued use of rule in homicide cases only); State v. George, 257 A.2d 19, 20–21 (N.H. 1969)
(holding substantial evidence independent of confession suffices in New Hampshire); State v.
Parker, 337 S.E.2d 487, 495–97 (N.C. 1985) (confession admissible if “trustworth[y]” even if
corpus delicti not established by independent evidence in North Carolina); Fontenot v. State,
881 P.2d 69, 77–78 (Okla. Crim. App. 1994) (abolishing corpus delicti rule in favor of Opper
standard in Oklahoma); Holt v. State, 117 N.W.2d 626, 633 (Wis. 1962) (holding prosecution
need only corroborate “any significant fact” in Wisconsin). An eleventh state, North Dakota,
formerly had a statutory corpus delicti rule that applied only in homicide cases, but that
provision was repealed in 1973. See State v. Champagne, 198 N.W.2d 218, 227–28 (N.D.
1972) (citing N.D. CENT. CODE § 12-27-28 (1972)). Therefore, it appears that North Dakota
currently has no corpus delicti rule.
rule.104 During this period, only one state, Massachusetts, has bucked the trend by
adopting the corpus delicti rule.105
It is true that the corpus delicti rule lives on, at least formally, in some thirty-
nine states.106 However, as Thomas Mullen has documented, some courts in
104 See People v. McMahan, 548 N.W.2d 199, 201–02 (Mich. 1996) (declining to abolish
corpus delicti rule by a four to three vote). The Washington Supreme Court recently declined to
abolish its corpus delicti rule by an eight to one vote. See State v. Ray, 926 P.2d 904, 906
(Wash. 1996).
105 See Commonwealth v. Forde, 466 N.E.2d 510, 513–14 (Mass. 1984) (overruling prior
caselaw and adopting the corpus delicti rule).
106 For examples of recent published state decisions citing and applying local versions of
the corpus delicti rule, see: Slaton v. State, 680 So. 2d 879, 897 (Ala. Crim. App. 1995) (stating
corpus delicti rule and finding corpus delicti of murder and rape by condition of victim’s body
in Alabama); State v. Jones ex rel. County of Maricopa, 6 P.3d 323, 326–29 (Ariz. Ct. App.
2000) (setting forth corpus delicti rule but holding rule does not apply at preliminary
examination in Arizona); Barnes v. State, 55 S.W.3d 271, 276 (Ark. 2001) (observing that the
corpus delicti rule “mandates only proof that the offense occurred and nothing more” in
Arkansas); People v. Kraft, 5 P.3d 68, 116 (Cal. 2000) (stating rule and holding corpus delicti of
murder satisfied by circumstances in which body was discovered in California); People ex rel.
T.A.O., 36 P.3d 180, 181–82 (Colo. Ct. App. 2001) (applying corpus delicti rule to reverse
juvenile’s sexual assault conviction in Colorado); Shipley v. State, 570 A.2d 1159, 1168–70
(Del. 1990) (stating rule and holding corpus delicti satisfied by condition of body and
circumstances of victim’s disappearance in Delaware); Schwab v. State, 636 So. 2d 3, 6 (Fla.
1994) (stating rule and finding corpus delicti of murder, kidnapping, and rape satisfied by
medical examiner’s testimony and other evidence in Florida); People v. Williams, 742 N.E.2d
774, 781–82 (Ill. App. Ct. 2000) (stating rule and finding corpus delicti of murder satisfied by
independent evidence in Illinois); Workman v. State, 716 N.E.2d 445, 447–48 (Ind. 1999)
(stating rule, but finding corpus delicti satisfied so long as independent proof of one crime
committed during criminal episode is supplied in Illinois); State v. Schomaker, 303 N.W.2d
129, 130–32 (Iowa 1981) (discussing Iowa’s version of corpus delicti rule, codified at IOWA R.
CRIM. P. § 2.21(4) (West 2002), requiring independent evidence that crime occurred and
defendant committed it); State v. Dang, 978 P.2d 277, 284–85 (Kan. 1999) (stating rule and
finding corpus delicti of murder established by condition of bodies in Kansas); Lofthouse v.
Commonwealth, 13 S.W.3d 236, 242 (Ky. 2000) (applying codified corpus delicti rule, KY. R.
CRIM. P. § 9.60 (Banks-Baldwin 2002), and finding corpus delicti of drug trafficking satisfied
by independent evidence in Kentucky); State v. Martin, 645 So. 2d 190, 195 (La. 1994)
(holding that, under Louisiana version of corpus delicti rule, corroborative evidence
independent of confession “need only show the essential injury involved in the charged
crime . . . [but] need not show every element in the definition of the charged crime”); State v.
Deschenes, 780 A.2d 295, 298–99 (Me. 2001) (stating corpus delicti rule but applying statutory
exception to rule for drunk driving cases to uphold operating under the influence conviction
based entirely on defendant’s admission that he was driving the vehicle in Maine); Paz v. State,
726 A.2d 880, 883–84 (Md. 1999) (stating rule and finding corpus delicti of attempted rape
satisfied by police observations of defendant’s attack on victim in Maryland); Commonwealth
v. Sineiro, 740 N.E.2d 602, 610 n.11 (Mass. 2000) (stating rule in dicta for Massachusetts);
People v. McMahan, 548 N.W.2d 199, 201–03 (Mich. 1996) (reaffirming corpus delicti rule
and finding insufficient independent evidence that deceased died from criminal agency in
Michigan); State v. Koskela, 536 N.W.2d 625, 629 (Minn. 1995) (citing Minnesota’s statutory
corpus delicti rule, MINN. STAT. § 634.03 (1994), and finding corpus delicti of burglary satisfied
by circumstances of offense); Edwards v. State, 737 So. 2d 275, 311–12 (Miss. 1999) (citing
corpus delicti rule for Mississippi and holding that prosecution may introduce confession before
introducing independent evidence); State v. Crenshaw, 59 S.W.3d 45, 49 (Mo. Ct. App. 2001)
(applying rule in Missouri and finding insufficient independent evidence of rape and sodomy);
State v. Torwirt, 607 N.W.2d 541, 546–47 (Neb. Ct. App. 2000) (stating rule for Nebraska and
finding insufficient independent evidence that sexual assault occurred); Sheriff of Washoe
County v. Dhadda, 980 P.2d 1062, 1065–67 (Nev. 1999) (stating rule but holding that
admissions made before crime committed may be used to establish corpus delicti of kidnapping
in Nevada); State v. Di Frisco, 571 A.2d 914, 923 (N.J. 1990) (observing that New Jersey
corpus delicti rule requires independent proof both of existence of crime and of trustworthiness
of confession); State v. Sosa, 14 P.3d 32, 36–37 (N.M. 2000) (stating rule and finding corpus
delicti of murder satisfied by condition of victim’s body in New Mexico); People v.
Lewandowski, 682 N.Y.S.2d 326, 327 (N.Y. App. Div. 1998) (stating rule for New York and
finding corpus delicti of forgery satisfied by signed receipts and testimony of victim that
signatures were not his); State v. Haynes, 719 N.E.2d 576, 578–80 (Ohio Ct. App. 1998)
(stating rule for Ohio and finding insufficient independent evidence supporting evidence
tampering charge); State v. Fry, 42 P.3d 369, 370–73 (Or. Ct. App. 2002) (applying Oregon’s
statutory corpus delicti rule, OR. REV. STAT. § 136.425(1) (2001), and finding insufficient
independent evidence for three of four rape counts); Commonwealth v. McMullen, 681 A.2d
717, 720–23 (Pa. 1996) (stating rule for Pennsylvania and finding independent evidence
insufficient to establish corpus delicti of homicide); State v. Marini, 638 A.2d 507, 515 n.3 (R.I.
1994) (stating rule and finding corpus delicti of arson satisfied by independent evidence in
Rhode Island); State v. Saltz, 551 S.E.2d 240, 253 (S.C. 2001) (stating rule for South Carolina
and finding corpus delicti of homicide satisfied by circumstances of victim’s disappearance and
the site where his body was found); State v. Thompson, 560 N.W.2d 535, 543–44 (S.D. 1997)
(stating rule for South Dakota and finding independent evidence insufficient to establish corpus
delicti of sexual contact with a minor); State v. Smith, 24 S.W.3d 274, 281–82 (Tenn. 2000)
(stating that confession must be corroborated with slight evidence of corpus delicti and finding
prior statements of sexual assault victims sufficient to establish corpus delicti in Tennessee);
Rocha v. State, 16 S.W.3d 1, 4–5 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000) (stating rule for Texas and finding
corpus delicti of robbery satisfied by testimony of independent witnesses); State v. DeHart, 17
P.3d 1171, 1174–77 (Utah Ct. App. 2001) (stating rule but applying exception for statements
made before commission of crime in Utah); State v. Weller, 644 A.2d 839, 840–42 (Vt. 1994)
(stating rule for Vermont and finding trial court properly decided question of whether there was
sufficient corpus delicti of arson); Cherrix v. Commonwealth, 513 S.E.2d 642, 651 (Va. 1999)
(stating rule for Virginia and finding corpus delicti of homicide, sodomy, and firearms offenses
satisfied by condition of body and testimony of other witnesses); State v. Bernal, 33 P.3d 1106,
1107–08 (Wash. Ct. App. 2001) (stating rule for Washington and finding insufficient
independent evidence to establish corpus delicti of heroin delivery); State v. Garrett, 466 S.E.2d
481, 491–92 (W. Va. 1995) (stating rule for West Virginia and finding corpus delicti of
homicide satisfied by circumstances of victim’s disappearance, testimony that defendant was
later seen driving victim’s truck with bloodstains on his pants, and medical testimony
concerning possible bullet hole in victim’s hip); and Betzle v. State, 847 P.2d 1010, 1021–22
(Wyo. 1993) (rejecting prosecution request to abolish rule and finding corpus delicti of sexual
assault satisfied by child victim’s unusual conduct and the testimony of a pediatrician who
examined the child in Wyoming).
states that do retain the rule have substantially weakened its impact by finding the
requirement satisfied by the most minimal independent evidence.107 Mullen has
also shown that courts in some corpus delicti jurisdictions have undermined the
rule by adopting exceptions.108
Mullen is surely correct that the last half of the twentieth century has
produced “a distinct trend away from the corpus delicti rule and toward the less
restrictive corroboration rule.”109 While Mullen and most other modern
commentators applaud this trend, I shall argue in the next part of this article that
the criticisms of the rule that have supported this trend are misplaced and that the
rule should be retained.
IV. ANSWERING THE CRITICS: WHY THE RULE SHOULD BE RETAINED
The judicial trend against the corpus delicti rule has been accompanied, or
egged on, by scholarly commentary that has been almost universally unfavorable
to the rule.110 The criticisms of the rule fall into essentially three categories: (1)
the rule is underinclusive because it does not apply to even the most unreliable
confession to an actual crime; (2) the rule is overinclusive because it results in the
suppression of reliable confessions; and (3) the rule is obsolete and unnecessary
because constitutionally-based doctrines provide adequate safeguards against the
use of unreliable confessions.
In this part, I shall set forth and answer each of these criticisms in some
detail. I will then explain why the weaker “corroboration” rule adopted by the
107 Mullen, supra note 6, at 416–17. Among other examples, Mullen cites State v. Owens,
359 S.E.2d 275, 278 (S.C. 1987), in which the South Carolina Supreme Court found the corpus
delicti of murder satisfied by evidence that the alleged victim had disappeared suddenly and by
evidence that the victim was not likely to leave voluntarily. Id. at 417 n.144. If such “proof” of
the corpus delicti were actually sufficient to satisfy the rule, there would have been no problem
admitting the confessions in Perrys’ Case and in the case of Stephen and Jesse Boorn, the two
miscarriages of justice that apparently led to the widespread adoption of the corpus delicti rule
in the United States.
108 Id. at 408–11. For example, several courts have refused to apply the rule to an
“admission” falling short of a full confession, see id. at 409 n.106 (citing cases from three
states), some courts have created a “res gestae” exception for confessions closely connected in
time and place to the crime itself, see id. at 410 n.113 (citing cases from two states), and other
courts have held that a confession to multiple crimes is admissible so long as the prosecution
establishes the corpus delicti to one of the crimes, id. at 411 n.116 (citing cases from four
states).
109 Mullen, supra note 6, at 413.
110 See, e.g., supra note 6 and accompanying text (citing treatises and articles critical of
corpus delicti rule). But see Margolis, supra note 60, at 45, 55–57 (arguing that the Supreme
Court should constitutionalize the corpus delicti rule); Brian C. Reeve, State v. Parker: North
Carolina Adopts the Trustworthiness Doctrine, 64 N.C. L. REV. 1285, 1297–301 (1986)
(criticizing North Carolina Supreme Court for abolishing corpus delicti rule).
federal courts and nearly a dozen states is a hopelessly inadequate substitute for
the corpus delicti rule.
A. Is the Corpus Delicti Rule Underinclusive Because It Is Inapplicable to

Confessions to Actual Crimes?
One common criticism of the corpus delicti rule is that a rule intended to
protect the mentally unbalanced or the coerced from the consequences of false
confessions should not be limited to cases in which the prosecution cannot
independently prove that a crime has occurred. As one critic put it:
The corpus delicti rule does little to protect defendants with limited mental
capacity. It may offer protection to one who, briefly losing control, confesses to
an imaginary crime and later recants. . . . [The rule] should not require, as it does
in most jurisdictions, merely that the prosecution prove that a crime was
committed by someone. One seeking punishment or notoriety . . . would more
likely confess to a real, probably celebrated, crime than to a fictitious one. 111
The most obvious problem with this criticism is that it misses the point of the
corpus delicti rule. The rule was never intended to suppress all unreliable
confessions; the rule was designed only to preclude confessions to, and
convictions for, fictitious crimes, such as the non-existent murders in Perrys’
111 Mullen, supra note 6, at 402–03; see also People v. McMahan, 548 N.W.2d 199, 205
(Mich. 1996) (Boyle, J., dissenting) (“[T]he 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.”). In the same portion of his article, Mullen also criticizes the
corpus delicti rule as irrational because it applies to uncorroborated extrajudicial confessions,
but not to confessions, such as guilty pleas, made during judicial proceedings. Id. at 402–03.
This particular criticism is difficult to understand since confessions law is largely built on the
proposition that extrajudicial confessions have long been regarded as inherently more suspect
than confessions freely rendered in a judicial proceeding. See, e.g., Perkins, supra note 60, at
177 (stating that “only the extrajudicial confession is viewed with distrust; no evidence ranks
higher than the confession in open court”). Even in the nineteenth century, procedural and
constitutional protections that were inapplicable to extrajudicial confessions were known to
greatly enhance the reliability of confessions in judicial proceedings. See GREENLEAF, supra
note 94, § 216, at 300–01. The author explains:
Judicial confessions are those which are made before the magistrate, or in Court, in the due
course of legal proceedings; and it is essential that they be made of the free will of the
party, and with full and perfect knowledge of the nature and consequences of the
confession. . . . [Such confessions are] sufficient to found a conviction, even if to be
followed by a sentence of death, they being deliberately made, under the deepest
solemnities, with the advice of counsel, and, the protecting caution and oversight of the
Judge.
Id. (emphasis omitted).
Case and in the cases of Stephen and Jesse Boorn.112 If the corpus delicti rule
serves that narrow but laudable purpose, as it clearly does,113 it hardly seems fair
to criticize the rule for not serving other worthwhile causes as well.
A second answer to this criticism is that it is perfectly rational for the law to
distinguish between an extrajudicial confession to an independently verifiable
crime and an extrajudicial confession to a crime that cannot be independently
established. Unlike the latter confession, the former confession is automatically
more reliable in at least one key respect. That is, if the crime described in a
confession actually occurred, it follows that the confession describes an objective
and external reality to at least some extent, a conclusion one cannot necessarily
draw about a confession to a crime whose existence cannot be independently
verified.
The McAllister case serves as a perfect example of this concept. If the
autopsy of Daniel McAllister had revealed evidence that he had been smothered,
his mother’s confession would, by that fact alone, be at least somewhat reliable.
Since Daniel’s autopsy revealed that all of the normal physical indications of
smothering were absent, Dawn McAllister’s confession is highly unreliable.
The Supreme Court has drawn exactly the same type of distinction in the
Fourth Amendment context. An anonymous tip containing significant and
independently verifiable details may provide probable cause or reasonable
suspicion justifying a seizure,114 while an anonymous tip lacking such verifiable
details cannot normally justify any non-consensual police action.115 The Court
112 See, e.g., People v. Williams, 373 N.W.2d 567, 570 (Mich. 1985) (purpose of corpus
delicti rule is “to guard against, indeed to preclude, conviction for a criminal homicide when
none was committed”). As Professor Perkins aptly put it, “[t]he execution of an innocent man is
equally tragic no matter what caused justice to miscarry in his case, but it seems most shocking
where the crime itself is found to have been nonexistent.” Perkins, supra note 60, at 173.
113 Indeed, critics of the rule, while usually acknowledging that convictions are rarely
reversed because of the corpus delicti rule, still complain that those few reversals are too many.
See, e.g., Mullen, supra note 6, at 415 (citation omitted) (“Although reversals based on the
corpus delicti rule are by no means frequent, they are common enough to constitute a
significant cost of maintaining the rule.”); Crisera, supra note 6, at 1581, 1583 (pointing out that
California courts rarely exclude evidence because of the absence of proof of the corpus delicti,
but complaining that the rule could “keep perfectly reliable extrajudicial confessions out of
evidence”). In other words, the critics do not dispute that the corpus delicti rule is effective in
suppressing confessions to fictitious offenses. Instead, their real complaint is that application of
the rule might occasionally result in the exclusion of a confession to a real crime. I shall discuss
and address this argument in Part IV.B, infra.
114 See, e.g., Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 243–46 (1983) (finding that probable cause
was established by corroboration of an anonymous tip describing suspects’ suspicious future
travel plans); Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330–32 (1990) (holding that reasonable
suspicion was established by corroboration of an anonymous tip describing suspect’s future
movements).
115 See Gates, 462 U.S. at 237 (agreeing with lower court that anonymous tip without
corroboration of details insufficient for probable cause); White, 496 U.S. at 329 (observing that
draws this common sense distinction between tipsters who provide substantial,
verifiable details and tipsters who do not because if “an informant is right about
some things, he is more probably right about other facts.”116
The corpus delicti rule, then, is grounded in the similar common sense belief
that an extrajudicial confession which can be verified as to one very important
fact, that the crime actually occurred, is more probably right about another crucial
fact, that the declarant is the one who committed the crime. Since some suspects
do unquestionably confess to non-existent crimes, it is perfectly rational for the
law to require the prosecutor to independently verify not just some details of the
confession but that the crime mentioned in the confession actually occurred.
B. Does the Corpus Delicti Rule Exclude Reliable Confessions?
A second common criticism of the corpus delicti rule is that it excludes

reliable confessions and, therefore, unjustly frees the guilty. As one critic put it,
“As long as the rule exists, it can be abused to keep perfectly reliable extrajudicial
confessions out of evidence.”117 Another critic complained that, “Literal
compliance with the corpus delicti rule sometimes results in unsuccessful
prosecutions of admittedly guilty people, often in circumstances that highlight the
absurdity of the rule.”118
But these criticisms prove far too much. How can it be said that a confession
to a crime is “perfectly reliable” if there is no independent evidence that the crime
occurred? Similarly, since anyone who confesses to any crime is, by definition,
“admittedly guilty,” should we discard the entire body of confessions law in favor
of automatic conviction upon proof of confession?
Underlying such criticisms is the premise, usually unstated, that the
extrajudicial confession is an exceptionally reliable piece of evidence and that,
therefore, any rule that requires the exclusion of extrajudicial confessions will
produce less reliable verdicts.119 Of course, early proponents of the corpus delicti
anonymous tip without corroboration would not have provided reasonable suspicion); see also,
e.g., Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266, 271 n.72 (2000) (holding that corroboration of an anonymous
tip limited to suspects’ present location and clothing was insufficient to establish reasonable
suspicion).
116 Gates, 462 U.S. at 244 (quoting Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 427 (1969)
(White, J., concurring)).
117 Crisera, supra note 6, at 1582–83 (emphasis added).
118 Mullen, supra note 6, at 415 (emphasis added).
119 At least one prominent critic of the corpus delicti rule, Professor Wigmore, has
explicitly stated that assumption: “[T]he danger which [the corpus delicti rule] is supposed to
guard against is greatly exaggerated in common thought. That danger lies wholly in a false
confession of guilt. Such confessions, however, so far as handed down to us in the annals of our
courts, have been exceedingly rare.” 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2070, at 510 (citation
omitted).
rule, such as Professor Greenleaf, proceeded from precisely the opposite premise:
“evidence of verbal confessions of guilt is to be received with great caution.” 120
Modern scholarship and empirical evidence have shown that Professor
Greenleaf’s skepticism of the extrajudicial confession was justified. Professors
Richard A. Leo and Richard J. Ofshe have documented and studied hundreds of
modern cases in which criminal defendants confessed to crimes that they did not,
or almost certainly did not, commit.121 It is impossible to document how
frequently confessions are false for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is
that a confession’s falsity cannot be conclusively demonstrated unless the defense
is fortunate enough to find incontrovertible evidence contradicting the
confession.122 What cannot be denied, however, is that false confessions are
regularly admitted into evidence and regularly lead to wrongful convictions.
The recent phenomenon of DNA exonerations has provided indisputable
evidence that the false confession is one of the leading causes of wrongful
conviction in the United States. Of 62 such DNA exonerations investigated by the
Innocence Project as of 1999, 23% of the convictions rested, at least in part, on
false confessions or admissions.123
Only by accepting the demonstrably erroneous premise that false confessions
are not a significant problem can one accept the critics’ claim that the corpus
delicti rule regularly results in the exclusion of perfectly reliable confessions. That
is, to accept this criticism, one must believe that an extrajudicial confession is
inherently reliable even when it cannot be corroborated to the minimal extent of
establishing that the crime mentioned in the confession actually occurred.
Indeed, one critic of the corpus delicti rule, Maria Lisa Crisera, has argued
exactly that: “The danger posed by the corpus delicti rule is, of course,
particularly pronounced in cases in which the defendant’s confession may be the
120 GREENLEAF, supra note 94, § 214, at 297–98.

121 See Richard A. Leo & Richard J. Ofshe, Missing the Forest for the Trees: A Response
to Paul Cassell’s “Balanced Approach” to the False Confession Problem, 74 DENV. U. L. REV.
1135, 1139 (1997) [hereinafter Leo & Ofshe, Missing the Forest]; see also id. at 1137 n.12
(referencing a “partial list of the case examples of the numerous false confessions that have
been documents [in the 1990s]”). Professor Leo and Ofshe have published numerous articles
documenting the extent of the modern false confession problem. See, e.g., Richard J. Ofshe &
Richard A. Leo, The Decision to Confess Falsely: Rational Choice and Irrational Action, 74
DENV. U. L. REV. 979 (1997); Richard J. Ofshe & Richard A. Leo, The Social Psychology of
Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions, 16 STUD.
L. & SOC’Y 189 (1997); Richard J. Ofshe, Inadvertent Hypnosis During Interrogation: False
Confession Due to Dissociative State; Mis-Identified Multiple Personality and the Satanic Cult
Hypothesis, 40 INT’L J. CLINICAL & EXPERIMENTAL HYPNOSIS 125 (1992).
122 See Leo & Ofshe, Missing the Forest, supra note 121, at 1137. In addition, many false
confessions are likely to go unreported since no criminal justice agency records or collects
statistics about false confessions. Id.
123 BARRY SCHECK ET AL., ACTUAL INNOCENCE 92, 263 (2000).
only available evidence of the crime committed.”124 As an example of such a

“danger,” Crisera cites In re Flodstrom,125 a case strikingly similar to the
McAllister case discussed in Part I of this article, in which the appellate court
reversed a mother’s conviction for smothering her baby because there was no
evidence, other than the mother’s confession, that the baby had died from
criminal causes.126 Crisera criticizes the result in Flodstrom:
In reaching its decision to release the defendant from custody, however, the court
failed to consider that independent evidence of infanticide or child abuse by
suffocation is virtually unattainable. In such cases, a confession may well be the
only evidence available. Permitting the corpus delicti rule to prevent the trier of
fact from considering such valuable evidence seems contrary to the interests of
justice.127
As discussed above, such a complaint betrays an exceptionally high degree of

faith in the inherent reliability of extrajudicial confessions.128 Crisera points to
nothing in Flodstrom to suggest that the confession there was reliable; on the
contrary, Crisera disagrees with the result in Flodstrom precisely because there
was no evidence to corroborate the confession and, therefore, no way to uphold
the defendant’s conviction.
Another corpus delicti critic, Mullen, cites five cases in support of his claim
that “the corpus delicti rule sometimes results in unsuccessful prosecutions of
admittedly guilty people, often in circumstances that highlight the absurdity of the
rule.”129 However, in three of those cases, Mullen, like Crisera, simply assumes
that the extrajudicial confessions must have been reliable despite the total absence
of corroboration,130 while the other two cases involve apparent misapplications of
the corpus delicti rule.131
124 Crisera, supra note 6, at 1583.

125 277 P.2d 101 (Cal. Ct. App. 1954).
126 See Crisera, supra note 6, at 1583 (citing Flodstrom, 277 P.2d at 103).
127 Id. (emphasis added).
128 If one shares Professor Wigmore’s faith that false confessions are “exceedingly rare,”
it does follow immediately that the corpus delicti rule amounts to “a positive obstruction to the
course of justice.” 7 WIGMORE, supra note 2, § 2070, at 510 (footnote omitted).
129 Mullen, supra note 6, at 415. The five cases Mullen cites are: Bray v. State, 670
S.W.2d 822 (Ark. Ct. App. 1984); State v. Zwierkowski, 117 N.W.2d 179 (Mich. 1962); Jones
v. State, 555 P.2d 63 (Okla. Crim. App. 1976); State v. Smith, 774 P.2d 519 (Wash. Ct. App.
1989); and State v. Ralston, 425 N.E.2d 916 (Ohio Ct. App. 1979).
130 As to Zwierkowski, Mullen complains that the “defendant’s confession to breaking and
entering at night was held inadmissible where independent evidence failed to show that the
burglary occurred at night.” Mullen, supra note 6, at 415 (footnote omitted). But Mullen
provides no reason to believe that the confession was reliable as to that, or any other, detail. See
id. As to Jones, Mullen writes that the defendant’s “conviction of assault with intent to commit
a felony was reduced to mere assault and battery because only the defendant’s confession
Since the claim that the corpus delicti rule frustrates the ends of justice is a
serious charge, one should expect the critics to support that claim with impressive
empirical evidence showing that the rule so frequently frees the guilty that its
costs outweigh any protection it provides to the innocent. On the contrary, none of
the modern critics of the rule has documented a single case in which proper
application of the rule resulted in the exclusion of a demonstrably reliable
extrajudicial confession. By contrast, the McAllister case, discussed in Part I of
this article, demonstrates that the proper application of the corpus delicti rule can
save an almost certainly innocent defendant from a lifetime in prison.
There is, of course, no denying that the application of the corpus delicti rule
might occasionally result in a guilty defendant going free.132 But exactly the same
can be said of the constitutional requirement that the prosecution prove all of the
revealed his intent to kidnap.” Id. (footnote omitted). Once again, Mullen does not explain why
the defendant’s confessed intent to kidnap should be considered reliable in the absence of any
evidence corroborating that intent. Finally, Mullen complains that in Ralston, the defendant’s
“murder conviction was reversed even though the defendant took police to the site where he
had deposited the victim’s remains, because there was no independent evidence as to the cause
of death.” Id. (footnote omitted). Also, Mullen does not explain why the defendant’s confession
should be considered reliable enough to support a murder conviction even when the forensic
evidence cannot corroborate it. See id. The fact that the defendant disposed of a body does not
prove that the decedent was murdered.
131 About Bray, Mullen writes that the defendant “confessed orally and in writing to
having set fire to a building,” but “his conviction of first degree criminal mischief was reversed
for want of independent proof of incendiary origin. The prosecution failed to overcome the
presumption of accident, even though there was evidence that the fire started in two places.”
Mullen, supra note 6, at 415 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted). Since evidence that a fire
started in two places unquestionably would corroborate a confession to starting a fire, Bray
simply appears to be wrongly decided. Similarly, Mullen complains about Smith that the
defendant’s
conviction for attempted murder was reversed because the evidence aliunde the
confession only established a plan to murder rather than a `substantial step’ taken
toward commission of the crime—notwithstanding that the defendant was found with
a knife strapped to his leg, in possession of numerous other weapons, and with a bag
of lime in his car.
Id. at 415 (footnote omitted). Once again, since the cited independent evidence clearly
corroborates the defendant’s confession that a substantial step had been taken, the case appears
to be wrongly decided.
132 Even the harshest critics of the rule grudgingly admit that the rule is seldom
successfully invoked. See Crisera, supra note 6, at 1583 (admitting that “only a few appellate
courts have found insufficient independent evidence of the corpus delicti and consequently
excluded extrajudicial statements,” but pointing out that more confessions may have been
excluded at the trial court level and that charges may not have been brought because of corpus
delicti problems); Mullen, supra note 6, at 415 (“Although reversals based on the corpus delicti
rule are by no means frequent, they are common enough to constitute a significant cost of
maintaining the rule.”).
elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.133 That is, if the prosecution
were required only to prove some of the elements beyond a reasonable doubt or to
prove all of the elements to a preponderance, there is no doubt that fewer guilty
people would escape punishment. We are willing to accept that cost because of
the “fundamental value determination of our society that it is far worse to convict
an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.”134 Since the corpus delicti rule,
like the high burden of proof in criminal cases, is designed to prevent conviction
of the innocent, the criticism that the rule might occasionally result in the freeing
of the guilty is simply insufficient to justify its abolition.
C. Have Constitutional Confession Doctrines Rendered the Corpus Delicti

Rule Superfluous?
The most serious criticism of the corpus delicti rule is that the rule is no
longer necessary because modern constitutional doctrines protect against the
admission of unreliable confessions. Professor McCormick, for example, has
written, “[g]iven the development of other confession law doctrines, especially
Fifth Amendment protections as promulgated in Miranda and the voluntariness
requirement, concerns regarding law enforcement interrogation practices do not
provide significant support for the corroboration requirement.”135 Other scholarly
and judicial critics of the rule have echoed McCormick’s argument.136
In this section, I shall show that the due process voluntariness doctrine and
Miranda are each insufficient to overcome the concerns that justify the existence
of the corpus delicti rule. In particular, I shall demonstrate that these modern
constitutional confession doctrines provide the least protection to the class of
persons—mentally ill suspects such as Dawn McAllister—who most need the
corpus delicti rule.
133 See In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364 (1970) (explaining that due process requires
“proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which
[the defendant] is charged”).
134 Id. at 372 (Harlan, J., concurring).
135 1 MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra note 6, § 145, at 563.
136 See, e.g., Goldenberg, supra note 6, at 622 (noting arguments that the “corpus delicti
rule has outlived its usefulness” in light of Miranda and other protections); Mullen, supra note
6, at 404 (arguing that corpus delicti rule’s rationale of excluding involuntary confessions “has
been dissipated by United States Supreme Court decisions limiting the admissibility of
questionable confessions”); People v. McMahan, 548 N.W.2d 199, 204 (Mich. 1996) (Boyle,
J., dissenting) (“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 constitutionalization of criminal procedure and other statutory
guarantees.”); State v. Parker, 337 S.E.2d 487, 495 (N.C. 1985) (corpus delicti rule unnecessary
since Miranda and the voluntariness doctrine provide adequate protection).
1. Due Process Voluntariness
The Supreme Court first developed the due process voluntariness doctrine
nearly seventy years ago in order to address the perceived problem of coercive
police interrogation practices.137 Nearly from the outset, however, the Court
recognized that the voluntariness doctrine was no substitute for the requirement
that a confession be corroborated:
Confessions may be unreliable because they are coerced or induced, and

although separate doctrines exclude involuntary confessions from consideration
by the jury, further caution is warranted because the accused may be unable to
establish the involuntary nature of his statements. Moreover, though a statement
may not be “involuntary” within the meaning of this exclusionary rule, still its
reliability may be suspect if it is extracted from one who is under the pressure of
a police investigation—whose words may reflect the strain and confusion
attending his predicament rather than a clear reflection of his past. Finally, the
experience of the courts, the police and the medical profession recounts a
number of false confessions voluntarily made . . . .138
In the 1960s, however, the Court did use the voluntariness doctrine on at least
two occasions to exclude confessions extracted from precisely the type of weak-
minded or mentally ill defendants the corpus delicti rule is designed to protect. In
Blackburn v. Alabama,139 the Court set forth in detail the defendant’s lengthy
history of severe mental illness in the years before and after his confession to a
robbery.140 In finding Blackburn’s confession involuntary, the Court stressed that
he was “insane and incompetent”141 at the time of the confession and, in
sweeping language that seemed to rule out the possibility of ever admitting
statements from such mentally ill suspects, observed:
Surely in the present stage of our civilization a most basic sense of justice is
affronted by the spectacle of incarcerating a human being upon the basis of a
137 The Court first announced the doctrine in Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 286
n.87 (1936). In Brown, the Court excluded the confession of a black defendant who had been
bullwhipped by a deputy until he confessed to a murder. Id. at 286–87.
138 Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 153 (1954) (citations omitted). The Smith Court
went on to affirm the admission of Smith’s confession by applying the corroboration
requirement, the weakened version of the corpus delicti rule that the Court had endorsed in the
companion case of Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84 (1954). Smith, 348 U.S. at 156–59.
139 361 U.S. 199 (1960).
140 Blackburn had been discharged from the United States Army after being diagnosed as
disabled by a psychosis. Id. at 200. After he had been institutionalized for four years, Blackburn
failed to return to the mental hospital from a ten-day leave, and the robbery was committed a
short time later. Id. at 200–01. After his arrest, Blackburn was committed to the mental hospital
for more than four years until he was finally declared competent to stand trial. Id. at 201–02.
141 Id. at 207.
statement he made while insane; and this judgment can without difficulty be
articulated in terms of the unreliability of the confession, the lack of rational
choice of the accused, or simply a strong conviction that our system of law
enforcement should not operate so as to take advantage of a person in this
fashion.142
While the Court observed that the circumstances under which the interrogation
had been extracted were relevant—Blackburn had been confined in a small room
filled with police officers for eight or nine hours—those circumstances simply
made the “chances of the confession’s having been the product of a rational
intellect and a free will become even more remote and the denial of due process
even more egregious.”143
Three years later, in Townsend v. Sain,144 the Court held that the
voluntariness doctrine would bar the admission of a confession obtained from a
suspect under the influence of a drug that allegedly acted as a “truth serum,” even
if the police officers who had questioned the suspect had no idea that the suspect
was drugged:
It is not significant that the drug may have been administered and the questions
asked by persons unfamiliar with hyoscine’s properties as a “truth serum,” if
these properties exist. Any questioning by police officers which in fact produces
a confession which is not the product of a free intellect renders that confession
inadmissible. . . . [I]n Blackburn v. Alabama, we held irrelevant the absence of
evidence of improper purpose on the part of the questioning officers. There the
evidence indicated that the interrogating officers thought the defendant sane
when he confessed, but we judged the confession inadmissible because the
probability was that the defendant was in fact insane at the time.145
If Blackburn and Townsend had been the last word on the subject, critics of
the corpus delicti rule would have a point. The due process voluntariness doctrine,
as set forth in those two decisions, seemed to preclude the admission of
statements from insane or intoxicated defendants even if the police had done
nothing wrong in obtaining those statements. Since persons in such mental states
are the most likely to confess to imaginary crimes without any coercion at all, a
constitutional doctrine flatly prohibiting the admission of such statements would,
in fact, make the corpus delicti rule largely unnecessary.
Unfortunately, Blackburn and Townsend turned out not to be the last word on
the admissibility of confessions from the mentally unfit. Nearly a quarter century
142 Id.
143 Id. at 208.
144 372 U.S. 293 (1963).
145 Townsend, 372 U.S. at 308–09 (footnote and citation omitted).
after Townsend, the Court radically reinterpreted Blackburn and Townsend in

Colorado v. Connelly.146
Although Connelly is a due process voluntariness case, the fact pattern
sounds like a classic corpus delicti scenario. One day in 1983, Francis Connelly,
who had long suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia,147 suddenly heard
the “voice of God.”148 Following “God’s” orders, Connelly withdrew money
from a bank, purchased an airplane ticket, flew from Boston to Denver, walked
up to a police officer at the Denver airport, and confessed to having murdered a
young girl, Mary Ann Junta, in Denver nine months earlier.149 After being
arrested and advised of his Miranda rights, Connelly repeated his confession at
police headquarters and agreed to take the officers to the scene of the supposed
killing.150 When he was interviewed by a public defender the following day,
Connelly became visibly disoriented and confused.151 After being sent to a state
hospital for evaluation, he was found incompetent to stand trial.152
There was very little reason to believe that Connelly’s confession described
an actual murder. By checking their records, the Denver police discovered that an
unidentified woman’s body had been found in April 1983, five months after
Connelly supposedly murdered young Mary Ann Junta, but there was no
evidence in the record that the body was Junta.153 There also was no evidence in
the record that the location described by Connelly was the place where the
unidentified body had been found, nor was there any physical evidence linking
Connelly to any crime.154 As Justice Brennan put it, “[t]here is not a shred of
competent evidence in this record linking the defendant to the charged homicide.
There is only Mr. Connelly’s confession.”155
146 479 U.S. 157 (1986).

147 Id. at 174 (Brennan, J., dissenting). The record indicated that Connelly had been
hospitalized for psychiatric reasons five times, including one stay lasting seven months. Id.
148 Id. at 161. As Justice Brennan noted in his dissent, Connelly also believed that his
father was God and that he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Id. at 174 (Brennan, J.,
dissenting).
149 Id. at 160–61.
150 Id.
151 Id. at 161.
152 Id. Seven months later, however, the physicians treating Connelly reversed that
evaluation and concluded that he was competent to stand trial. Id. As Justice Brennan observed
in dissent, Connelly became competent only after being treated with antipsychotic and sedative
medications. Id. at 175 (Brennan, J., dissenting). At the time of his confession, Connelly had
been off of his antipsychotic medication for at least six months. Id. at 174.
153 Id. at 160; see also id. at 183 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
154 Id. at 183 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
155 Id.
The state trial court, relying in part on Townsend v. Sain,156 concluded that
Connelly’s statements were not the product of his free will and were, therefore,
involuntary within the meaning of the Due Process Clause.157 The Colorado
Supreme Court agreed and accordingly affirmed the suppression of all of
Connelly’s statements.158
The Supreme Court reversed in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist that
completely recast Townsend and Blackburn so as to require an insane or mentally
incompetent defendant to establish “the integral element of police overreaching”
in order to win an involuntariness claim.159 According to the Court in Connelly, it
was not Blackburn’s insanity that made his confession involuntary; it was the fact
that the police exploited that insanity by a lengthy interrogation in a small room
filled with police officers.160 Similarly, the Connelly majority explained, it was
not the fact that Townsend was under the influence of a drug with the properties
of a “truth serum” that made his confession involuntary; it was the fact that he
was given the drug by a police doctor and interrogated by officers who
supposedly knew of the drugging.161
Having transformed Blackburn and Townsend into police misconduct
cases,162 the Court went on to derive a rigid rule that “coercive police activity is a
156 372 U.S. 293 (1963).

157 Connelly, 479 U.S. at 162.
158 People v. Connelly, 702 P.2d 722, 728–29 (Colo. 1985).
160 Id. at 164–65. This reading of Blackburn is, of course, diametrically opposed to the
explanation of Blackburn in Townsend:
[I]n Blackburn v. Alabama, we held irrelevant the absence of evidence of improper
purpose on the part of the questioning officers. There the evidence indicated that the
interrogating officers thought the defendant sane when he confessed, but we judged the
confession inadmissible because the probability was that the defendant was in fact insane
at the time.
Townsend, 372 U.S at 309 (footnote and citation omitted). The failure of the Connelly majority
to even mention the Townsend Court’s interpretation of Blackburn is striking.
161 Connelly, 479 U.S. at 165. As with Blackburn, it is impossible to square this reading of
Townsend with the actual language of the case. Townsend could not have been more clear that it
did not matter whether the doctor or the interrogating officers knew that Townsend was under
the influence of a “truth serum”:
It is not significant that the drug may have been administered and the questions asked by
persons unfamiliar with hyoscine’s properties as a “truth serum,” if these properties exist.
Any questioning by police officers which in fact produces a confession which is not the
product of a free intellect renders that confession inadmissible.
Townsend, 372 U.S. at 308 (footnote omitted).
162 For a strong criticism of the Court’s revision of Blackburn and Townsend, see Alfredo
Garcia, Mental Sanity and Confessions: The Supreme Court’s New Version of the Old
“Voluntariness” Standard, 21 AKRON L. REV. 275, 277–80 (1988).
necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not ‘voluntary’ within the
meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”163 As for the
fact that any statement from a person such as Connelly would be highly
unreliable, the Court dismissed this concern in a single sentence: “A statement
rendered by one in the condition of respondent might be proved to be quite
unreliable, but this is a matter to be governed by the evidentiary laws of the forum
and not by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”164 Since it
was the “voice of God,” not the police, who coerced Connelly into confessing, the
Court concluded that the admission of his statements did not violate the Due
Process Clause no matter how mentally ill he was and no matter how unreliable
his statements were.165
Thus, Connelly makes it perfectly clear that the due process voluntariness
doctrine is not a substitute for the corpus delicti rule. First, the due process
voluntariness doctrine provides no protection at all for a mentally ill, intoxicated,
or weak-minded suspect who confesses to an imaginary crime unless the
government somehow coerced the suspect into confessing.
Second, Connelly flatly contradicts the corpus delicti critics’ argument that
the due process voluntariness doctrine is sufficient to keep out unreliable
confessions. On the contrary, in the language highlighted above, the Court held
that the reliability of a confession is not a constitutional concern at all.166 Instead,
the Court concluded that the evidentiary law of the forum, such as the corpus
delicti rule, is the only check on the admission of unreliable confessions.
Dawn McAllister’s case provides a good example of how Connelly has
rendered the voluntariness doctrine ineffective to protect the mentally ill against
convictions based on unreliable confessions to fictitious crimes. McAllister came
to the attention of the Michigan State Police during her seventh
institutionalization after she told her psychiatrist that she had been a member of a
baby-sacrificing Satanic cult.167 She had also told wildly implausible stories to
police officers, a minister, and several other psychological professionals.168 She
was interrogated by a detective who had completed doctoral level training in
psychology and who was known for using psychological tactics, including

164 Id. (emphasis added) (citation omitted).
165 See id.
166 It is debatable whether it is true that voluntariness cases before Connelly were not
concerned with the reliability of the confession. See George E. Dix, Federal Constitutional
Confession Law: The 1986 and 1987 Supreme Court Terms, 67 TEX. L. REV. 231, 272–76
(1988) (arguing that the Connelly rejection of reliability as a relevant factor in constitutional
analysis is surprising and unjustified); Albert W. Alschuler, Constraint and Confession, 74
DENV. U. L. REV. 957, 959–60 (1997) (arguing Connelly correctly recognized reliability
irrelevant to constitutional analysis).
167 See supra notes 30–33 and accompanying text.
hypnosis, during interrogations.169 She finally confessed after the detective told
her that she had killed her baby and even helpfully suggested the motive.170 She
repeated that confession to her cellmates and then steadfastly denied it.171
Despite all of this, there is almost no chance that an appellate court would
have excluded any of McAllister’s statements as involuntary. When McAllister
made her statement to the police, she was not in custody and she had been
interrogated less than two hours.172 Since the interrogation was not recorded, the
only evidence of what actually happened during that session came from
McAllister, the interrogating detective, and another detective who watched the
interrogation over closed circuit television.173 After the two detectives testified
that they did not overreach or abuse McAllister in any way, the trial court found
her statement to be voluntary.174
In other words, Dawn McAllister’s police interrogation was just like Francis
Connelly’s. It does not matter that McAllister and Connelly both had histories of
severe mental illness or that they had both heard voices telling them that they had
committed terrible crimes. It does not matter that the resulting statements are
completely unreliable and unverifiable. All that matters for the statement to be
admissible under the voluntariness test is that there be no evidence of police
“overreaching.”
McAllister’s alleged statement to her cellmates also would not have been
excludable after Connelly, despite McAllister’s mental illness, because those
statements were not made to governmental agents. Once again, her mental state
makes no difference at all in the due process voluntariness test.
In short, both of McAllister’s inculpatory statements would have been
certainly admissible under the due process voluntariness doctrine. That doctrine
would not have protected her from the consequences of her unreliable statements.
The claim that the corpus delicti rule is unnecessary because the due process
voluntariness doctrine is sufficient to keep unreliable confessions from mentally
incompetent suspects out of evidence is indefensible after Connelly. Connelly and
McAllister were both severely mentally ill, both made statements that were highly
unreliable, and there was no independent proof that the murders to which they
confessed had occurred. Since, as the Court held, the admission of Connelly’s
statements did not violate the Due Process Clause, no critic of the corpus delicti
rule should seriously argue that the voluntariness doctrine is an adequate
substitute for the rule.
171 For a detailed description of the circumstances leading up to and surrounding
McAllister’s statements, see supra note 51 and accompanying text.
173 See supra note 44 and accompanying text.
174 Suppression Hearing, Transcript at 89, People v. McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC
(Shiawassee, Mich. Cir. Ct. June 5, 1992).
2. Miranda
Contrary to the claims of some courts,175 Miranda also provides almost no

protection at all to the persons for whom the corpus delicti rule is primarily aimed.
First, Miranda applies only to those suspects in “custody.”176 It is not enough that
the suspect has been briefly detained177 or that the encounter occurred at the
police station.178 Therefore, Miranda is inapplicable when, for example, a
mentally disturbed person such as Francis Connelly walks up to a police officer
and confesses to a crime.179 Even if, as in Dawn McAllister’s case, the defendant
is the focus of a police investigation and is being interrogated at the police station,
she is not entitled to Miranda warnings unless she has actually been taken into
custody.180
Second, Miranda applies only if the defendant is in custody in a “police
dominated atmosphere.”181 Therefore, even if the defendant is in custody,
Miranda will not affect the admissibility of a confession made to a private party
or even to a police officer if the defendant mistakenly believed the officer was a
private party.182 Thus, Miranda would not keep out the statements Dawn
McAllister made to her cellmates just after she was arrested even though she was
in custody at the time.
Third, even if the defendant is in custody in a police dominated atmosphere,
Miranda does not apply unless the police subject the defendant to
175 See, e.g., State v. Parker, 337 S.E.2d 487, 494 (N.C. 1985) (expressing concerns
underlying the corpus delicti rule that confession may have been induced by abusive police
tactics “have been undercut by the principles enunciated in Miranda v. Arizona”).
176 See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966) (setting forth custody requirement).
177 See generally Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 437–38 (1984) (describing that
defendant detained briefly during traffic stop was not in custody for purposes of Miranda).
178 See, e.g., California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1125 (1983) (per curium) (finding no
custody where defendant voluntarily accompanied police to stationhouse).
179 See Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 169 n.3 (1986) (holding that the Miranda
custody requirement was satisfied only when the police officer handcuffed the individual—a
paranoid schizophrenic suspect with command auditory hallucinations who had approached
officer and confessed to murder).
180 See generally Beheler, 463 U.S. at 1125 (finding no Miranda violation where
defendant voluntarily at police station interrogated without warnings or waiver); Stansbury v.
California, 511 U.S. 318, 324–25 (1994) (per curiam) (noting that the officer’s subjective intent
to take defendant into custody was irrelevant to Miranda).
181 Miranda, 384 U.S. at 445.
182 See, e.g., Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292, 296–98 (1990) (holding Miranda
inapplicable where jailed defendant questioned by undercover police officer posing as fellow
jail inmate).
“interrogation.”183 A mentally ill or intoxicated suspect, therefore, who volunteers

a confession while in police custody receives no protection at all from Miranda.
Of course, such a suspect is far more likely to blurt out a confession than a sane
and sober suspect.
Finally, and most importantly, even if Miranda does apply, it only requires
the police to warn the suspect and obtain a waiver before proceeding with the
interrogation. However, only a small minority of suspects invoke Miranda and
refuse to talk.184 Miranda warnings are especially unlikely to deter a mentally
impaired suspect who is perfectly willing to confess to imaginary crimes.
Miranda will not protect such a suspect from custodial police interrogation (even
assuming that the police need to interrogate to obtain an incriminating statement)
so long as she has the mental capacity to “voluntarily, knowingly and
intelligently”185 waive her Miranda rights, a standard so low that courts routinely
uphold Miranda waivers from the mentally retarded and the very young.186
The Supreme Court made it clear in Colorado v. Connelly187 that the
suspect’s mental incapacity is no barrier to an effective Miranda waiver. In
Connelly, the Court not only held voluntary the statements the paranoid
schizophrenic defendant, acting on commands from the “voice of God,” made to
the police before he was taken into custody;188 the Court went on to hold that the
statements he made after the police arrested, Mirandized, and interrogated him
were admissible as well. In response to Connelly’s claim that his Miranda waiver
was invalid because his severe mental illness made him incapable of voluntarily
relinquishing his rights, the Court held that a Miranda waiver is always voluntary
so long as there is no evidence of “police overreaching.”189
183 See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 300–01 (1980) (defining “interrogation” for
Miranda purposes as direct questioning or other actions that a reasonable police officer should
know are likely to “elicit an incriminating response”).
184 See, e.g., Paul G. Cassell & Bret S. Hayman, Police Interrogation in the 1990s: An
Empircal Study of the Effects of Miranda, 43 UCLA L. REV. 839, 860 (1996) (finding that
12.1% of felony suspects invoked their Miranda rights); Richard A. Leo, Inside the
Interrogation Room, 86 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 266, 275–76 (1996) (finding an invocation
rate of 21.7%).
185 Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444.
186 See, e.g., State v. Cleary, 641 A.2d 102, 113 (Vt. 1994) (upholding Miranda waiver
from retarded defendant with IQ of 65); People v. Abraham, 599 N.W.2d 736, 743 (Mich. Ct.
App. 1999) (upholding Miranda waiver from eleven year old child).
187 479 U.S. 157 (1986).
188 See supra notes 146–66 and accompanying text for a discussion of the voluntariness
issue in Connelly.
189 See Connelly, 479 U.S. at 170:
The voluntariness of a waiver of this privilege has always depended on the absence of
police overreaching, not on `free choice’ in any broader sense of the word. . . . Miranda
protects defendants against government coercion leading them to surrender rights
protected by the Fifth Amendment; it goes no further than that.
In sum, those suspects likely to confess to wholly fictitious crimes receive no

meaningful protection from Miranda. So long as the police avoid taking such a
suspect into custody, Miranda does not come into the picture at all. Even if the
police do arrest the suspect, Miranda provides no barrier against interrogation,
regardless of the suspect’s mental state or the farfetched nature of her confession,
so long as the police can obtain a Miranda waiver without having to resort to
coercion. Especially after Connelly, Miranda provides no more effective
protection against confessions to imaginary crime than does the due process
voluntariness doctrine.
D. Why a Corroboration or Trustworthiness Requirement Cannot

Substitute for the Corpus Delicti Rule
Those jurisdictions that have abolished the corpus delicti rule have replaced it
with “corroboration” or “trustworthiness” requirements.190 In Opper v. United
States,191 by far the most influential of such corroboration cases, the Supreme
Court rejected the corpus delicti rule but held that the prosecution must introduce
some independent evidence corroborating a confession that would “tend to
establish the trustworthiness of the statement.”192 In a companion case to Opper,
the Court explained that the prosecution could meet that requirement by
introducing independent evidence to “bolster the confession itself and thereby
prove the offense ‘through’ the statements of the accused.”193 The states that have
since abolished the corpus delicti rule have directly adopted the Opper
corroboration requirement or some functional equivalent.194
While a few hardcore critics of the corpus delicti rule may prefer to eliminate
all corroboration requirements,195 most support the recent trend of replacing the
corpus delicti rule with an Opper-type standard.196 Scholars and courts endorsing
the Opper standard usually claim that a corroboration or trustworthiness
requirement is sufficient to exclude the types of unreliable confessions that
motivated the development of the corpus delicti rule in the first place.197

191 348 U.S. 84 (1954).
192 Id. at 93.
193 Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 156 (1954).
194 See supra note 103.
195 See, e.g., Mullen, supra note 6, at 418 (“All forms of the corpus delicti rule should be
abolished, including the corroboration requirement.”).
196 See, e.g., 1 MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra note 6, §145, at 559–60 (endorsing the
Opper standard); Crisera, supra note 6, at 1594–97 (arguing California should replace corpus
delicti rule with Opper standard).
197 See, e.g., 1 MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra note 6, §145, at 560 (“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
Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of both

theory and empirical practice, the corroboration requirement actually provides no
protection at all to those likely to confess to fictional crimes.
On a theoretical level, the fundamental problem with the Opper corroboration
rule is that it is so malleable that almost any independent evidence of anything can
serve to “corroborate” the confession or make it “trustworthy.” Unlike the corpus
delicti rule, which requires the prosecution to introduce independent evidence to
show that the crime actually occurred, the independent evidence required under
the corroboration rule can be used to bolster almost any aspect of the confession,
including obvious and uncontroverted facts unrelated to whether the crime
occurred at all.198
A few examples of cases from those states that have adopted a corroboration
standard demonstrate just how expansive the standard really is. The District of
Columbia Court of Appeals held that a defendant’s completely unsupported
confession to sodomizing a particular decedent satisfied the Opper standard
primarily because there was evidence that he had also confessed to another act of
sodomy with a different decedent whose body was found in a position that was
consistent with anal intercourse.199 The New Hampshire Supreme Court recently
found a defendant’s confession to illegally driving a vehicle sufficiently
corroborated, even though there was no other evidence that he drove the vehicle
and his girlfriend testified that she was the driver, because the testimony of other
witnesses contradicted certain other aspects of the girlfriend’s testimony.200 The
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals twice found confessions sufficiently
corroborated largely because the defendants confessed more than once.201 The
Wisconsin Supreme Court found an especially dubious murder confession
sufficiently corroborated because more than one police officer overheard it.202
delicti formulation.”); State v. Parker, 337 S.E.2d 487, 494 (N.C. 1985) (the trustworthiness
doctrine “provides greater assurance against the use of an unreliable confession”).
198 See, e.g., State v. Urie, 437 P.2d 24, 26 (Idaho 1968) (holding “slight corroboration
will suffice” to admit confession even if corroboration does not establish any elements of the
corpus delicti).
199 Adams v. United States, 502 A.2d 1011, 1022–23 (D.C. 1986).
200 State v. Miller, 765 A.2d 693, 695–96 (N.H. 2001).
201 See Tilley v. State, 963 P.2d 607, 612 (Okla. Crim. App. 1998) (finding defendant’s
confession to murder sufficiently corroborated despite inconclusive autopsy results because,
among other factors, defendant allegedly confessed on several occasions); Fontenot v. State,
881 P.2d 69, 78 (Okla. Crim. App. 1994) (finding defendant’s confession sufficiently
corroborated largely because he allegedly repeated it to a friend and a jailhouse informant).
202 Holt v. State, 117 N.W.2d 626, 632–34 (Wis. 1963). In Holt, the defendant was
convicted of murdering her newborn baby, whose body was found burned in a furnace. There
was, however, no medical evidence or any other type of evidence, apart from Ms. Holt’s
confession to the police, to establish that the baby had been born alive. Thus, Ms. Holt’s
confession would have been clearly inadmissible if the Wisconsin Supreme Court had applied
the corpus delicti rule.
As these cases demonstrate, the Opper standard has no real content. If a court
applying that standard wants to admit a confession, it can always point to
something that “corroborates” the confession or otherwise makes the confession
“trustworthy.” It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the appellate courts in
those states that have rejected the corpus delicti rule virtually never find that a
confession should have been excluded under the Opper standard, unless such a
finding would make no real difference in the outcome of the case.203
Dawn McAllister’s case illustrates the impotence of the Opper standard. If
McAllister had been prosecuted in one of the states that follows that standard, the
prosecution could have argued, almost certainly successfully, that her confession
was sufficiently corroborated and trustworthy because she had confessed to
killing other children in Satanic rituals, two officers overheard her confession at
the police station, and she repeated her confession to her cellmates in jail. That is,
if McAllister lived in a state that had rejected the corpus delicti rule, she probably
would still be serving a life sentence today.
The corpus delicti rule, for all of its limitations, has the distinct advantage of
being a bright line rule. It is not enough for the prosecution to corroborate some
aspects of the confession or to point to some facts that allegedly make the
confession trustworthy. The prosecution must instead show that the crime to
which the defendant confessed actually occurred. Since it is a bright line rule, the
corpus delicti rule is difficult to evade or manipulate; if, as in Dawn McAllister’s
case, there is no independent evidence that the crime occurred, the confession is
strictly inadmissible.
The Opper rule provides no real standards and no real protections to people
like Dawn McAllister. It is, therefore, an inadequate substitute for the corpus
delicti rule.
203 I am aware of only four published state appellate decisions finding confessions
insufficiently corroborated under an Opper-type standard: State v. Harrell, 386 S.E.2d 103, 107
(N.C. Ct. App. 1989) (finding insufficient evidence to corroborate defendant’s admission that
uninsured vehicle was “his” where police investigation revealed vehicle actually belonged to
another person); Cannon v. State, 904 P.2d 89, 102 (Okla. Crim. App. 1995) (finding
insufficient corroboration of defendant’s statement that defendant aided commission of rape
and sodomy); Littlejohn v. State, 989 P.2d 901, 911–12 (Okla. Crim. App. 1998) (finding
insufficient corroboration of defendant’s confession to two murders used as aggravating
circumstances during penalty phase of capital trial); Barth v. State, 132 N.W.2d 578, 579–80
(Wis. 1965) (finding insufficient evidence to corroborate defendant’s admission to homosexual
acts). In Harrell and Cannon, the defendants received no real benefit from the decisions since
the appellate courts in both cases upheld more serious convictions. In Littlejohn, the appellate
court’s ruling did not affect the defendant’s conviction but did require a new sentencing
hearing. Thus, only the defendant in Barth actually had his principal conviction overturned.
One need not be terribly cynical to observe that the only defendant to receive this substantial
benefit under the Opper rule had been convicted and imprisoned for the victimless “crime” of
engaging in homosexual conduct.
V. CONCLUSION
The corpus delicti rule has proven to be a valuable safeguard against

wrongful convictions in a small but important group of cases in which suspects
have confessed to wholly fictitious crimes. Contrary to the claims of the critics
who have urged courts to abolish the rule, constitutionally-based confession
doctrines do not and cannot serve the same function.
Even conceding the critics’ argument that the corpus delicti rule occasionally
allows guilty defendants to escape justice, that result can only occur in cases in
which the prosecution’s evidence is so weak that any conviction would be
unreliable. Like the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, the need for
reliable convictions justifies the possibility that some guilty persons may go free.
What is indisputable is that the corpus delicti rule does provide a clear
standard that protects some vulnerable defendants against wrongful convictions
for fictitious crimes. For that reason alone, it is a rule worth retaining.

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In Defense of the Corpus Delicti Rule

The common law corpus delicti rule prohibits the introduction of an

9 U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1.

II. A MODERN CORPUS DELICTI CASE: PEOPLE V. MCALLISTER

A. The Death of an Infant and a Mother’s Descent into Madness

It is this quality that made Dawn McAllister such an easy defendant to

B. How To Win a Murder Case with Nothing but a Confession

After discrediting McAllister’s Satanic sacrifice story, the Michigan State

47 Trial Transcript, Vol. 2, at 161, People v. McAllister, No. 92-6589-FC (Shiawassee,

C. Undoing an Injustice with the Corpus Delicti Rule

Two years later, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned McAllister’s

55 See supra note 28.

As I will demonstrate in detail in Part III.C of this article, no constitutional

III. THE VENERABLE ORIGINS OF A STRANGE DOCTRINE: A BRIEF HISTORY

A. The Early English Cases

59 479 U.S. 157 (1986).

B. The Nineteenth Century Rise of the Corpus Delicti Rule in the

Nineteenth-century American courts turned out to be much more receptive

evidence treatise in support of the proposition that “evidence of verbal

Since, as Professor Wigmore has observed, most American jurisdictions

C. The Recent Erosion of the Rule in the United States

IV. ANSWERING THE CRITICS: WHY THE RULE SHOULD BE RETAINED

A. Is the Corpus Delicti Rule Underinclusive Because It Is Inapplicable to

B. Does the Corpus Delicti Rule Exclude Reliable Confessions?

A second common criticism of the corpus delicti rule is that it excludes

120 GREENLEAF, supra note 94, § 214, at 297–98.

only available evidence of the crime committed.”124 As an example of such a

As discussed above, such a complaint betrays an exceptionally high degree of

124 Crisera, supra note 6, at 1583.

C. Have Constitutional Confession Doctrines Rendered the Corpus Delicti

1. Due Process Voluntariness

Confessions may be unreliable because they are coerced or induced, and

after Townsend, the Court radically reinterpreted Blackburn and Townsend in

146 479 U.S. 157 (1986).

156 372 U.S. 293 (1963).

163 Connelly, 479 U.S. at 167.

Contrary to the claims of some courts,175 Miranda also provides almost no

“interrogation.”183 A mentally ill or intoxicated suspect, therefore, who volunteers

In sum, those suspects likely to confess to wholly fictitious crimes receive no

D. Why a Corroboration or Trustworthiness Requirement Cannot

190 See supra notes 99–103 and accompanying text.

Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of both

The corpus delicti rule has proven to be a valuable safeguard against

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