There was a time when confessing to a crime was not enough to get you convicted in Utah — police and prosecutors had to have outside evidence to win in court.
The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday changed that.
The "corpus delicti" rule previously required someone to be convicted not merely based on a confession but also with corroborating evidence. For many legal scholars, that rule acted as a sort of gate that prosecutors had to pass through to show that a crime occurred.
The high court also said the corpus delicti rule should be replaced by another rule termed the "trustworthiness standard."
However, at least one legal scholar fears the new ruling could lead to subjective decisions by judges and to prosecutors introducing cases based on faulty confessions.
Corpus delicti refers to the "body of a crime." The trustworthiness standard is seen as "the responsibility of the trial judge to determine . . . whether a defendant's confession is sufficiently trustworthy or reliable to be admitted into evidence," the Utah Supreme Court wrote.
The ruling stems from the case of Brent Mauchley, who appealed his conviction for insurance fraud and theft by deception.
Although the Supreme Court agreed with the concept regarding confession alone, it did not side with Mauchley.
Mauchley filed an insurance claim against Salt Lake City stating he had gotten hurt by falling into an uncovered manhole on Jan. 5, 1995. He got hospital treatment, the manhole was covered and the city's insurance firm settled with him on Aug. 17, 1998.
However, six months later Mauchley went to the South Salt Lake Police Department and confessed he made the whole thing up. He was charged with two second-degree felonies of insurance fraud and theft by deception. He then sought to have the charges dismissed because the corpus delicti rule prevented prosecutors from using his confession against him without other evidence of the crimes.
A district court disagreed with Mauchley, but the court of appeals decided that the district court erred. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals' decision in Mauchley's case. The state high court did so because the "ex post facto" (after the fact) clause of the U.S. Constitution "prevents application of the trustworthiness standard to this case."
The corpus delicti rule is thought to have originated in Britain centuries ago and was adopted in the United States and later expanded beyond the British interpretation.
The Utah Supreme Court argued in its ruling that in situations where a crime obviously has occurred, but law enforcement doesn't know who did it, a false confession may incorrectly identify someone who gets labeled as the perpetrator. The police have corroborating evidence that something happened and, combined with a confession, prosecutors now have a case — but it's against an innocent person.
"In summary, we conclude the corpus delicti rule was originally erroneous because it inadequately protects the innocent, yet allows the guilty to go free," the justices wrote.
They added that safeguards that have been recognized since the rule's inception make it unnecessary and the "changing face" of criminal law has made the rule "more unworkable. Each of these factors persuade us that more good than harm will come from abolishing the rule," the justices wrote.
The rule also is "judge-made" rather than mandated by the Constitution, they wrote.
But the justices said that though the rule was being overturned, they are not completely eliminating the corroboration rule because they recognized there still is a need to prevent convictions based on false confessions.
It is not uncommon for people to confess to crimes they didn't commit, said University of Utah law professor Erik Luna.
"The Utah Supreme Court seems to believe that eliminating the corpus delicti rule and replacing it with the trustworthiness rule is a minor adjustment with all benefits and no costs. I think that's overly sanguine.
"The court apparently believes that the sole purpose of the corpus delicti rule is to ensure innocent individuals are not convicted in court based solely on their confession. I suspect there is a deeper rationale here for having the corpus delicti rule — there should be some minimum standards required of a prosecutor before he brings a case against an individual who is presumed innocent in the eyes of the law."
She said the rule also stands as a background of limitations for prosecutors when they decide to file charges in the first place.
"In that sense, the corpus delicti rule serves as an important filter when prosecutors are deciding whether or not to bring a case." Luna worries the new trustworthiness standard could turn out to be a non-standard, similar to the "voluntariness" standard of confessions used prior to the adoption of the Miranda decision by the U.S. Supreme Court and its resulting warning.
"What's trustworthy to one person is not trustworthy to another. It's that history of manipulation of the voluntariness rule that led the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt Miranda," Luna said. "I have this fear that trustworthiness will depend on which courtroom door the prosecutor enters."
E-mail: lindat@desnews.com