So I just saw the M. Night Shyamaln movie “Devil” a few days ago on Netflix, in which one of the characters is confronted by the devil, escapes damnation by confessing his sins (including a hit and run) and is later apprehended by the police.
This prompted me with a question, (also drawing from the real life experience of a friend). Here’s a hypothetical.
John Doe is a young man who’s out at a nightclub with his friends Carla, Darla and Marla. He has several drinks and has been given bad advice about how fast your system clears alcohol, so he THINKS he’s under the legal limit and ends up driving home with the girls. Unfortunately, he’s well over the legal limit and comes to realize this by the time he makes it home (and the girls agree). Nevertheless, they are not stopped by the cops and nothing bad happens.
Over the next year, John feels incredibly guilty about how he put himself and three of his friends at risk, even though there were no consequences. He goes to confess to a priest, and the priest tells him he should man up and go take the legal consequences. So a year and a day after he drove under the influence, John walks into a police station and confesses his crime, telling the police they can call Carla et al. as witnesses.
Would the police be able to prosecute him, based solely on the perpetrator’s guilty confession a year after the fact? And would they actually have any interest in doing so?
I realize the hit and run case in the movie is an easier case, since that was a felony and this would be a misdemeanor (albeit still a reprehensible one). Still, I’m curious about what the law would make of such a situation.
In my state they couldn’t prosecute if they wanted. There is a 1 year statute of limitations on misdemeanors.
I can’t possibly imagine any jurisdiction with prosecutors having so much free time that they would want to attempt to prosecute it. If they did, John could simply plead guilty without having to put on evidence of his guilt; no need to call witnesses.
In your scenario, the confession to the priest is irrelevant in legal terms. He could have murdered someone, yesterday, or jayalked twenty years ago and the confession to a priest would remain irrelevant. The police and prosecutor would act (or not act) based on his confession to them, regardless whether that confession was prompted by his priest, his lawyer, his mother, or a drinking buddy. The priest would not be called as a witness at trial (in the U.S. and many/most other countries), but it would be the confession to the civil authorities that would invoke official response.
No, I meant the confession to the police would be the only evidence of the crime. I’m aware that priests can’t divulge that kind of information. In this scenario, the priest would be the one who urged him to face legal consequences for his crime.
Presumably they need “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” and a simple confession is not much good. People are mistaken about things (in their favour or against themselves) all the time. So they would need to go back, interview the bartender and the passengers, etc. If it’s been a year, how reliable are any records? Video footage is gone, there’s obviously no blood-alcohol evidence, memories of a year ago are going to be spotty and unreliable for any of the witnesses. (He also could have spilled a drink or two, or put them down unfinished by the dance floor, etc.)
At best, the DA could lay a charge, hope the judge doesn’t throw it out for insufficient evidence , and hope the guy doesn’t sober up and change his plea to not guilty.
This is precisely why there are statute of limitations on more trivial crimes.
Why? I can see that happening, but on paper the DA should have an open and shut case, and drunk driving is a serious crime with potential to kill people, albeit a misdemeanor.
In the real life case I’m thinking of (friend of mine) it happened three years ago, and the statute of limittaions for most misdemeanors is like 6 years, so in theory it could be prosecutable.
Basically two things have to be proven in a DUI. Operation and impairment. In this case they could possibly prove operation if they looked close enough. Possibly. Got the statements from the girls, bartenders etc. They certainly can’t prove impairment. There was no BAC test. There were no observations or FST. There is no case. Not a lawyer but I would think it would be deemed unethical to push a case through with the hopes of getting a guilty plea even though there was no case. Even with a guilty plea the judge will hear the particulars of the case and should not accept the plea.
This doesn’t appear to be true. I didn’t do a check of all 50 states, but in the half dozen I chose at random the maximum statute of limitations for misdemeanors was 2 years for the worst crimes, and 1 year for most. What state did this take place in?
I’m with the others who are saying that a DA would be unlikely to take up prosecution that relies completely on a person sticking to their unsupported confession once faced with the consequences of their actions.
I asked this question here once but in a murder case, guy comes in and confesses to a murder decades ago and no evidence of the victim or witnesses can be found. Like a guy confesses to killing a homeless person whose name he did not know, disposed of their body in such a way no physical evidence exists(maybe he took it out on a boat and weighed it down with cinder blocks and dumped it in a random spot in the ocean he doesn’t remember exactly where anymore, or he worked at a crematorium etc) and no witnesses can be found because it is decades later.
What would happen, I don’t remember exactly every answer but the consensus seemed to be the case would not be prosecutable.
I guess you could also substitute something like confessing to illicit drug manufacture or smuggling or something a few decades ago and no physical evidence exists anymore.
Every so often the police get a confession for a very old murder; but in most cases, the fellow was a suspect (or one of several) and the confession just nailed it down. Plus, often the confession will include details never made public, that only the murderer would have known. That’s a bit different from a confession that could just as easily be the typical nut determined to confess to something.
I see no reason why this could not be prosecuted, assuming it is within the applicable statute of limitations. John Doe has confessed to every element of the crime, and the confession does not appear to be coerced.
In practice I would not expect the authorities to bother, but I don’t understand that to be the question.
Would the reasoning be, like, “part of the reason for the law is deterrence, and someone who feels this guilty about it is probably unlikely to re-offend?” Or something else?