State v. Messer, Uncorroborated Confessions & the Corpus Delicti Rule

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post (here) about the corpus delicti rule. That rule popped up in a recent court of appeals case, State v. Messer. Here’s a refresher and an update on the new case. Under the corpus delicti rule, the State may not rely solely on the extrajudicial confession of a defendant to obtain a conviction; rather, the State must produce substantial independent corroborative evidence that supports the facts underlying the confession. As originally interpreted in North Carolina, the rule required some independent evidence of the crime itself—the body of the crime. However, in State v. Parker, 315 N.C. 222 (1985), the North Carolina Supreme Court relaxed that rule. In Parker, the court adopted a new, broader standard providing that the evidence could either prove commission of the crime or corroborate the confession itself, establishing its trustworthiness. For now, let’s call this second way of satisfying the rule “the trustworthiness prong.” Here’s how the corpus delicti issue played out in Messer. After the defendant was arrested on warrants for first-degree murder and robbery of victim Billy, he admitted the following to the police: I told him to take me to Benson and uh, before we got to Benson, I told him I needed to get out and pee and when I got out, I acted like I peed, pulled a gun out of my pants, opened my door back up and shot him in the head. The defendant also said that he took the murder weapon [...]