requiring some corroboration of any significant fact of the crime in order to produce confidence in the truth of the confession; all elements of crime do not need to be proved independently
How later courts described this case
- requiring some corroboration of any significant fact of the crime in order to produce confidence in the truth of the confession; all elements of crime do not need to be proved independently
- charred infant torso found in furnace constituted sufficient independent corroboration of defendant's confession that baby was alive when placed in the furnace
- requiring only some corroboration of any significant fact establishing confidence in the confession
- in a criminal trial, “there must be some corroboration of the confession in order to support a conviction”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Fairchild, J.
(concurring). I would not direct any criticism at the police officers for failure to obtain a warrant before going to talk with Mrs. Holt. The information *484 which aroused them was a report by a neighbor of a states ment Mrs. Holt had made. The report could not be overlooked, but it seemed good judgment to obtain Mrs. Holt’s side of the story before initiating any other action on the basis of the report alone.
Proof that the officers said to Mrs. Holt that she had the right to refuse permission to search would have made a clearer case of consent, and I join in the suggestion that it would be an excellent practice for officers to give such information. But under the circumstances described here, I would see no reason, once the officers were satisfied that Mrs. Holt consented to the search, to leave her home in order to obtain a search warrant.