Miller v. State
No. PD-0038-14
Case Summary written by Molly Neace, Staff Member.
JUDGE HERVEY delivered the opinion of the Court in which PRESIDING JUDGE KELLER, and JUDGES KEASLER, ALCALA, RICHARDSON, YEARY joined.
In November 2011, the appellant confessed, both verbally and in writing, to four incidents of molesting his daughter during a 27-day period. The state charged the appellant with four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child under six years of age.
At trial, the state corroborated Count Three by positively identifying the appellant’s seminal fluid on a tested section of carpet next to his daughter’s changing table. Detectives did not obtain any additional evidence that would corroborate his confessions on the other three counts. The jury convicted the appellant of all four counts, sentencing him to life confinement on each count. On appeal, the appellant argued that the state failed to establish corpus delicti by corroborating his confessions on three of the four counts with independent evidence. The court of appeals agreed and acquitted him on those three counts. In response, the state filed a Petition for Discretionary Review, which the Court of Criminal Appeals granted.
The court looked at three issues: (1) whether or not the prosecution satisfied the corpus delicti rule in this case; (2) whether the rule continues to serve its intended purpose in Texas’s jurisprudence; and (3) whether application of the exception to the appellant would violate his due process rights.
First, the state argued that the corpus delicti rule should be abolished in Texas. But if the court determined that an extrajudicial confession requires corroboration, then the state argued for the trustworthiness standard. And finally, if the court elected to keep the corpus delicti rule, the state argued it should be applied less rigorously to those cases where a defendant confesses to multiple crimes that involve a single course of conduct. In response, the appellant argued that abolishing the corpus delicti rule was unjustified and replacing it with the trustworthiness standard was inappropriate. Also, the appellant argued that the exception is based on circular logic and causes public-policy concerns.
In its discussion, the court introduced policy reasons for the corpus delicti rule suggesting that it protects mentally infirm individuals confessing to imaginary crimes and those who give extrajudicial confessions due to official coercion. Additionally, the court reviewed criticism and various jurisdictional interpretations of the rule. With this background, the court overruled the state’s first and second grounds for review, electing not to abolish the corpus delicti rule in Texas or replace it with the trustworthiness standard because the rule continues to satisfy its jurisdictional purpose.
On the state’s third ground for review, the court elected to adopt the closely related crime exception on a limited application to the corpus delicti rule; the exception applies only to sufficiently proximate offenses so that the introduction of the extrajudicial confession does not violate the underlying policy reasons of the rule. Accordingly, in cases where a defendant gives extrajudicial confessions to similar criminal offenses, the state need only establish the corpus delicti of one offense. Thus, the state satisfied the corpus delicti rule in this case.
On its last issue, the court decided that the retroactive application of the closely related crimes exception would not violate the appellant’s due process rights. Based on the law at the time of Appellant’s conduct, the decision does not unexpectedly and indefensibly violate his due process of law. The court’s decision to allow the exception reasonably conforms to the law. In conclusion, the court reversed the judgment of the court of appeals and reinstated the trial court’s judgment.
JUDGE MEYERS, dissenting.
The dissent believed the majority improperly came to the aid of the state in electing to adopt the closely related crime exception. Further, the dissent contended the new exception eliminated the protection that the rule ensures and disagreed with the alteration of the corpus delicti rule.