KDP Description:
Before any court can convict any person of any crime, the prosecution must first prove that the crime actually occurred. Not that the defendant committed it. Not that the defendant confessed to it. That the crime itself happened - established by evidence that exists independently of anything the defendant said. This requirement is called corpus delicti. It is one of the oldest and most fundamental protections in Anglo-American criminal law. And most people have never heard of it.
Corpus delicti - Latin for the body of the crime - is not a technicality. It is not a loophole. It is a foundational legal doctrine developed over centuries of hard experience with what happens when courts convict people without independent proof that a crime occurred. People have confessed to murdering victims who were later found alive. People have confessed to arsons where the fire was accidental. People have confessed to crimes that existed nowhere except in the pressure of an interrogation room - and without the corpus delicti requirement standing as a structural check on that process, those confessions sent innocent people to prison.
This book documents that doctrine completely. It traces corpus delicti from its origins in Roman law and English common law through its adoption in American courts and its systematic erosion over the past seven decades. It examines the Supreme Court decisions that replaced the traditional independence requirement - the rule that corpus delicti must be established by evidence wholly independent of the defendant's statements - with the weaker federal trustworthiness standard that has permitted a generation of false confession wrongful convictions to proceed to verdict unchecked.
It follows specific named cases where corpus delicti was the decisive issue. It draws on the Innocence Project's finding that nearly 29 percent of DNA exoneration cases involved a false confession. It examines the psychology of false confessions - the research of Saul Kassin, Richard Leo, and Gisli Gudjonsson establishing why innocent people confess and how frequently it happens. And it connects that research to the legal doctrine that was specifically designed to provide a structural check on the consequences.
Most importantly, this book is a practical tool. It covers how corpus delicti challenges are raised at every stage of a criminal proceeding - from pre-trial suppression motions through trial arguments, appellate challenges, and post-conviction claims. It identifies which jurisdictions follow which standard. It provides the specific legal arguments most likely to succeed in each context. And it closes with a complete reference chapter covering the doctrine's elements by crime category, the applicable standard by jurisdiction, motion frameworks, appellate argument structures, and research resources.
Before they can convict, they must prove it happened. This book explains exactly what that means, exactly where it applies, and exactly what to do when the prosecution has not done it.
