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(Latin for "body of the crime"; plural: ), in
Western law Western law comprises the legal traditions of Western culture, with roots in Roman law and canon law. As Western culture shares a Graeco-Roman Classical and Renaissance cultural influence, so do its legal systems. History The rediscovery of th ...
, is the principle that a crime must be proved to have occurred before a person can be convicted of committing that crime. For example, a person cannot be tried for
larceny Larceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking or theft of the personal property of another person or business. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of Engla ...
unless it can be proven that property has been stolen. Likewise, in order for a person to be tried for
arson Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wat ...
it must be proven that a criminal act resulted in the burning of a property. ''
Black's Law Dictionary ''Black's Law Dictionary'' is the most frequently used legal dictionary in the United States. Henry Campbell Black (1860–1927) was the author of the first two editions of the dictionary. History The first edition was published in 1891 by West P ...
'' (6th ed.) defines "''corpus delicti'' as: "the fact of a crime having been actually committed". In
common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...
systems, the concept has its outgrowth in several principles. Many jurisdictions hold as a legal rule that a
defendant In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one jurisdic ...
's out-of-court confession, alone, is insufficient evidence to prove the defendant's guilt beyond reasonable doubt. A corollary to this rule is that an accused cannot be convicted solely upon the testimony of an accomplice. Some jurisdictions also hold that without first showing independent
corroboration Corroborating evidence, also referred to as corroboration, is a type of evidence in law. Types and uses Corroborating evidence tends to support a proposition that is already supported by some initial evidence, therefore confirming the propositio ...
that a crime happened, the prosecution may not introduce evidence of the defendant's statement.


Requirements

In general, all ''corpus delicti'' requires at a minimum: # The occurrence of the specific injury; and # some criminal act as the source of the injury. For example: * Homicide: 1) An individual has died 2) as a result of action (or inaction) by another person. * Larceny: 1) Property is missing 2) because it was stolen. In essence ''corpus delicti'' of crimes refers to evidence that a violation of law occurred, no literal 'body' is needed.


Murder cases

When a person disappears and cannot be contacted, many police agencies initiate a
missing person A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, de ...
case. If, during the course of the investigation, detectives believe that they have been murdered, then a "body" of evidentiary items, including physical, demonstrative and testimonial evidence, must be obtained to establish that the missing person has indeed died, and that their death was by
homicide Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
, before a suspect can be charged with murder. The clearest evidence in these cases is the physical body of the deceased. However, in the event that a body is not present or has not yet been discovered, it is possible to prove a crime took place if sufficient circumstantial evidence is presented to prove the matter
beyond a reasonable doubt Beyond a reasonable doubt is a legal standard of proof required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems. It is a higher standard of proof than the balance of probabilities standard commonly used in civil cases, beca ...
.B. Berg, ''Criminal Investigation'', McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2007 For example, the presence at a missing person's home of spilled human blood, identifiable as that person's, in sufficient quantity to indicate
exsanguination Exsanguination is death caused by loss of blood. Depending upon the health of the individual, people usually die from losing half to two-thirds of their blood; a loss of roughly one-third of the blood volume is considered very serious. Even a sing ...
, demonstrates—even in the absence of a corpse—that the possibility that no crime has occurred, and the missing person is merely missing, is not reasonably credible.


Misinterpretation

The British serial killer
John George Haigh John George Haigh (; 24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the Acid Bath Murderer, was an English serial killer convicted for the murder of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. Haigh battered to death or shot his ...
destroyed the bodies of his victims with acid apparently because he thought that, in the absence of a corpse, murder could not be proven because there was no ''corpus delicti''. Haigh had misinterpreted the Latin word ''corpus'' as a literal body rather than a figurative one. This had previously been the case, under Matthew Hale's Rule of "no body, no crime", but in the twentieth century, the law expanded to allow prosecution for murder solely on circumstantial evidence. The
sovereign citizen movement The sovereign citizen movement (also SovCit movement or SovCits) is a loose grouping of litigants, activists, tax protesters, financial scheme promoters and conspiracy theorists, who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpret ...
often uses this term during routine traffic stops. Sovereign citizens believe that traffic infractions are not crimes, and thus can not be proven in a court of law.


See also

*
Corroboration in Scots law The importance of corroboration is unique to Scots criminal law. A long-standing feature of Scots law, the requirement for corroborating evidence means at least two independent sources of evidence are required in support of each crucial fact befo ...
* Element (criminal law) *
Murder conviction without a body It is possible to convict someone of murder without the purported victim's body in evidence. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England th ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Corpus delicti Criminal law Evidence law Legal rules with Latin names