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Commonwealth v. Villalta-Duarte9/12/2002
Suffolk.
February 12, 2002
Evidence, Admissions and confessions, Corroborative evidence. Constitutional Law, Admissions and confessions. Practice, Criminal , Sentence, Duplicative charges. Assault with Intent to Rape. Indecent Assault and Battery.
Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on December 11, 1996.
The cases were tried before Robert H. Bohn, J.
A Superior Court jury convicted the defendant of two counts of rape of a child, two counts of assault with intent to rape, and one count of indecent assault and battery of a child. He was found not guilty of assault and battery of a child under fourteen causing bodily injury. On appeal, the defendant claims, as he did in a motion to dismiss the indictments and in his three motions for a required finding of not guilty, that there was insufficient evidence of his guilt, other than his confessions. See Commonwealth v. Forde, 392 Mass. 453 (1984).
The corroboration rule.
In Forde, the Supreme Judicial Court held for the first time that "an uncorroborated confession is insufficient to prove guilt." Id. at 457. Until that decision in 1984, Massachusetts was the only State that did not require such corroboration. Ibid. See Commonwealth v. Killion, 194 Mass. 153, 153-154 (1907) (holding that there was no error in the trial judge's refusal to instruct the jury that the defendant could not be convicted on his extra-judicial confessions unless there was other evidence of the alleged crime, but noting that "the great weight of authority is against the sufficiency of an uncorroborated extra-judicial confession to warrant a conviction," and concluding that, in any event, there was corroboration in that case); Commonwealth v. Kimball, 321 Mass. 290, 293 (1947) (holding fast to the Massachusetts rule while acknowledging the general rule elsewhere); Commonwealth v. Shaheen, 15 Mass. App. Ct. 302, 307 (1983) (declining to depart from the settled law of the Commonwealth on corroboration). As enunciated in Forde, supra at 458, " he . . . rule requires only that there be some evidence, besides the confession, . . . that the crime was real and not imaginary."
The court belatedly adopted the rule despite the fact that "the majority rule ha been criticized, and diluted, and the advantages of our flexible rule . . . acknowledged." Id. at 457. See, e.g., Daeche v. United States, 250 F. 566, 571 (2d Cir. 1918) (Hand, J.) (" hat [the corroboration] rule has in fact any substantial necessity in justice, we are much disposed to doubt . . . . uch evils as it corrects could be much more flexibly treated by the judge at trial"). Ironically, the Forde court concluded that the rule was "of no assistance" in that case because there was corroboration. Forde, supra. Forde had initially reported that his wife was missing and then, the next day, reported that he had discovered his wife's body on the back porch. Id. at 454. The court held that those facts constituted corroboration of an incriminating statement Forde later signed at the police station. Ibid. The body constituted the "corpus delicti" -- the loss or injury sustained. Id. at 458. The issue in this case is whether circumstantial evidence of a different sort satisfies the rule. We turn to the facts of this case.
Facts.
The jury could have found the following facts. In 1994, the defendant and his wife and their one year old son lived in an apartment in Revere. The victim, whom we shall call Amy, and her mother and brother lived in the same apartment building as the defendant and his family. In the early summer of 1994, Amy's mother posted a notice in the laundry room at the apartment c
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