# Can you be convicted on a confession alone? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 7, 2012, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694 "2012-01-07T02:02:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/1 "2012-01-07T02:02:29Z")
Lets say someone gets some weird thrill out of confessing to fictional crimes, so they go to the police station and confess to something like the following: Befriending and murdering a woman a few years ago whose identity they did not know and that carried no identification(lets say a probable illegal immigrant) so there would be no way to correlate it with missing person records etc. They then disposed of the body in a way that left no physical evidence thatcould be found at the time of the confession. You can substitute any other crime that would leave no evidence for the above, I just doubt anyone would bother for anything less than murder. Making the big assumption that the police and DA take it seriously, could a conviction occur based on nothing but a confession? ---
**Author:** ![zombywoof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/9e8a1a/32.png) [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/2 "2012-01-07T02:05:58Z")
IANAL but I don’t think it would be possible in any real world sense without any evidence of a victim. ---
**Author:** ![zombywoof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/9e8a1a/32.png) [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/3 "2012-01-07T02:13:10Z")
(I mean, not necessarily without physical evidence like a body, but with not even any evidence that the supposed victim ever existed). ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/4 "2012-01-07T02:15:00Z")
With no hard evidence, I don’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/5 "2012-01-07T03:32:01Z")
As set forth in the OP, very unlikely, but not impossible. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/6 "2012-01-07T04:09:41Z")
Of course, happens all the time. Someone tries to confess, they are charged with public mischief since there is no evidence to corroborate the story and in fact they have not coverd all the angles, some part of their story is inconsistent with reality. To convict someone, they need some evidence a crime actually happened. There also needs to be some detail in the confession that matches the evidence that would be more than a lucky guess, thus proving the person (or his interrogator) is not just making things up. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/7 "2012-01-07T04:23:34Z")
Theoretically yes. Practically any conviction based solely on a confession has a high chance of getting thrown out on Appeal as being unsafe. So the Court is likely to want at least some corroborating evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Hilary\_Algar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilary_algar/32/4282_2.png) [@Hilary\_Algar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilary_Algar)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/8 "2012-01-07T12:30:22Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Someone tries to confess, they are charged with public mischief since there is no evidence to corroborate the story and in fact they have not covered all the angles, some part of their story is inconsistent with reality… > > There also needs to be some detail in the confession that matches the evidence that would be more than a lucky guess, thus proving the person (or his interrogator) is not just making things up. Many misguided folks falsely confessed to the Brown’s Chicken massacre of 1993. None were convicted. > **[Brown's Chicken massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown's_Chicken_massacre)** > > The Brown's Chicken massacre was a mass murder that occurred on January 8, 1993, in Palatine, Illinois, when two robbers shot and killed seven employees at a Brown's Chicken fast-food restaurant. > The case remained unsolved for more than nine years, until one of the assailants was implicated by his girlfriend in 2002. Police used DNA samples from the murder scene to match one of the suspects, Juan Luna. Luna was put on trial in 2007, found guilty of seven counts of first degree murder, and sent... ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/9 "2012-01-07T13:58:46Z")
> [@Hilary\_Algar](#): > > Many misguided folks falsely confessed to the Brown’s Chicken massacre of 1993. None were convicted. > > [Brown's Chicken massacre - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown's_Chicken_massacre) That’s not really the same thing. You need some kind of evidence that a crime has been committed before you can convict somebody of it. I am going to stick my non-lawyer neck out and say that it is not possible. People falsely confess all the time, but the police don’t take them seriously unless something can corroborate their confession - giving details that only the perpetrator would know, for instance. With no details known about the crime, at all, no corroboration is possible. Not gonna happen. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/10 "2012-01-07T14:42:03Z")
Probably the most basic burden on a prosecutor is to present evidence that a crime was committed. Absent that, it would take a thoroughly corrupt judge and jury, working in collusion, to produce a conviction - which would have essentially no chance of standing up on appeal. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/11 "2012-01-07T16:01:40Z")
A friend of mine served 3 years of a five to ?year sentence for a crime he did not commit. His best friend was the responsible party, and it woulda been his third strike. Rather than see his friend go away for a long time, my buddy said the guns were his and he hid them without the home owner’s knowledge. Anecdote, but hey it is possible. ---
**Author:** ![lawbuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/13edae/32.png) [@lawbuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lawbuff)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/12 "2012-01-07T16:57:02Z")
If an arrest is made, when the Arraignment/Probable cause hearing comes up, I can totally see a Judge dismissing it. Unless such facts are of such a nature as only the person who committed the murder would know them, I don’t even see an arrest being made, period, much less the hurdle of a PC hearing. Now you can be Indicted before arrest, so in that case, the GJ believed there was PC to charge the defendant, that however is NOT a Judge ruling on the PC. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/13 "2012-01-07T17:05:26Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > A friend of mine served 3 years of a five to ?year sentence for a crime he did not commit. His best friend was the responsible party, and it woulda been his third strike. Rather than see his friend go away for a long time, my buddy said the guns were his and he hid them without the home owner’s knowledge. > > Anecdote, but hey it is possible. That’s not what the OP asked. In your example, there \*was \*a crime, someone other than the guilty party just confessed to it. What the OP is asking is what if someone makes up a crime that never happened and confessed to it. There’s no hard evidence because it never happened. All the police have is the confession. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/14 "2012-01-07T18:05:08Z")
In Illinois (where I’m an attorney but not your attorney :p), there must be some evidence outside of the confession tending to show that the crime being charged & tried actually occurred. By the way, this is the doctrine of _corpus delicti_ that came up ever so often on Perry Mason; it doesn’t mean you can’t have a murder without a body, just that there must be witnesses, physical evidence, or the like outside the confession to show that the person in question was killed. Mind you, you can have a valid conviction if the only evidence that this defendant was the perpetrator of the crime was his confession (if the trier of fact accepts the confession as true, not coerced, etc. as with any other confession). But a confession to a totally uncorroborated crime isn’t supposed to be accepted by the Illinois courts and (as **Xema** noted) wouldn’t survive appeal. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/15 "2012-01-07T18:18:38Z")
Happens all the time. [Henry Lee Lucas - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lee_Lucas) Henry Lee Lucas was in fact a serial killer. When police discovered that he would confess to any unsolved murder, they got him to confess over the years to several hundred murders of open cases across the country. Don’t trust police or prosecutors. They will lie to you and ask you to confess to crimes you weren’t within a thousand miles of. If you are tricked into confessing, you will serve the time. My recollection of criminal law class, more than 25 years ago, was that there had to be some corroborating evidence, that a confession alone wasn’t enough. In real life, that protection isn’t always there. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/16 "2012-01-07T19:24:23Z")
A confession alone is insufficient for a conviction, but actual evidence of guilt is not necessary because many people have been convicted from false confessions. Often, based on a confession, and lacking any other credible evidence, prosecutors will pursue and obtain a conviction. I’ve never heard of a case where a confession without evidence of an actual crime being committed resulted in a conviction. But that’s about all it takes in reality. Prosecutors, despite their high and mighty rhetoric, pursue convictions without regard to reality. They are paid to prosecute and convict, not to achieve justice. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2012, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/17 "2012-01-07T20:13:18Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > When police discovered that he would confess to any unsolved murder, they got him to confess over the years to several hundred murders of open cases across the country. Again, this doesn’t meet the conditions specified in the OP: these were actual crimes, not ones invented by the guy who confessed to them. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2012, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/18 "2012-01-08T02:09:58Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > …Prosecutors, despite their high and mighty rhetoric, pursue convictions without regard to reality. They are paid to prosecute and convict, not to achieve justice. As a former prosecutor, I acknowledge that this not an uncommon view, and there certainly are prosecutors who wrongly take that approach. But a prosecutor’s ethical duty is to see that justice is done, not just to get a conviction. Most prosecutors, in my experience, try to do the right thing. “The United States Attorney [or any prosecutor] is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor – indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.” _Berger v. United States_, 295 U.S. 78 (1935) ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/19 "2012-01-08T04:14:30Z")
Some people here have mentioned that it was never pass appeal and would never get by a jury. But what if the person _wants_ to go to jail? So, they’ll be no appeal, nor will there be a jury, since he would very likely plead guilty. Could a person be convicted in such a case? Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2012, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694/20 "2012-01-08T05:28:14Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > As a former prosecutor, I acknowledge that this not an uncommon view, and there certainly are prosecutors who wrongly take that approach. But a prosecutor’s ethical duty is to see that justice is done, not just to get a conviction. Most prosecutors, in my experience, try to do the right thing. I hope for all our sakes that you are correct, and I am wrong. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-be-convicted-on-a-confession-alone/608694.md?page=2)