Answer

Colton Turner’s Case Discussion 3

            There are instances where a suspect may be convicted wrongfully, especially of the court does not rely on the corpus delicti rule. The primary focus of this analysis is to examine an instance where the jury members do not have to convict a suspect based on his/her confession.

            One of the general criminal law principle, referred to as the corpus delicti rule provides a guidance that a standalone confession is not enough for a suspect to be convicted of crime (Wesoloski, 2015). The major focus of this law is to avoid wrongful convictions through a rule that implicitly acknowledges the phenomenon of false confessions. Operating under the guidance of the corpus delicti rule, I will ignore the prosecutor’s statement guiding that I should find the suspect guilty since she confessed to the crime. Despite the fact that only circumstantial evidence is available, I should not consider the prosecutor’s statement because more actions can still be considered to explore and understand what happened resulting to the murder. This is mainly focused on preventing instances of wrongful conviction likely to be experienced if the defendant is not guilty.

            Despite not considering the prosecutor’s guide that I should find the defendant guilty, I will not tell the judge if the decisions of the members of the jury were influenced by the statement after they discussed the statement. This is founded on the notion that not all jurisdictions follow the corpus delicti rule precisely. According to Schwartzbach (2020), some jurisdictions which do not follow the rule tend to focus on whether the corroborating evidence shows that the crime actually transpired. In this case, it is evident that the crime took place as the defendant already confessed to committing the criminal act. In this case, attention will not be provided on whether the confession was reliable and trustworthy.