Corpus Delicti: Establishing Murder in the Absence of Dead Body

Let me start with giving an example –

We all know what happened in “MANISHA’s Rape Case in Hathras”! The kind of brutality that was been shown by rapist was carried forward by the Police Authorities, in the sense that – the officials without informing or giving the dead body to the family of the victim did its cremation after midnight and between dawn. They thought nobody would be aware about it, but the justice finds its way on its own and somehow we all got to know that the Police Officials went against the LAW & ORDER and obeyed the orders of higher authorities instead of punishing those rapists.

Even though the victim’s body showed rape signs, its dead body was equally important for establishing the untold fact which when revealed might create havoc. But the officials did not let the truth to pour out!! That’s where people went in rage and demand for justice increased.

What exactly is Corpus delicti?

It literally means "body of the crime" in Latin. In its original sense, the body refers not to a corpse but to the body of essential facts that, taken together, prove that a crime has been committed. In a case of arson, it would be a ruined building; in a murder case, the victim's corpse (body).

Elements of corpus delicti -

(1) Actus reus —The guilty act

(2) Mens rea—The guilty mind

(3) Concurrence —The coexistence of

(a) an act in violation of the law, and

(b) a culpable mental state

(4) Causation—The concurrence of mind and act must produce harm.

Let’s say in an assault case, a broken nose might be part of the body of the crime. And in a homicide case, a dead body is part of the corpus delicti.

Ever wondered how is a charge established? A crime must have occurred in the very first place in order to establish a charge. Here, body implies evidence and not a corpse in literal sense. The effect of corpus declicti falls upon the admissibility of confessions. The components of corpus delicti have a close relationship with the role a confession plays in a case.

As a rule in its initial phase, an absence of a corpus delicti which is a corroborative piece of evidence, the confession alone was not considered to be of much value, in American legal system however, several exceptions have been made to this trend.

In State V. Nicely, the body of the victim, who was also the defendant's wife, was never recovered. However there was no dearth of circumstantial evidence from the victim's blood marks to her car which was found abandoned on a bridge and the defendant's conflicting statements regarding the same. The defendant was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence for the aggravated murder of his wife, which brings us to primarily the genus where the concept of corpus delicti takes a rather tricky position.

It is no doubt that corpus delicti imposes a rider upon the excess reliance upon the confessions by the courts in the cases of culpable homicides. However it has been established over a number of judicial decisions that – “an absence of body itself may not necessarily mean the absence of corpus delicti or rather the presence of the circumstantial evidence is so formidable that it compensates for the corpus delicti which in the cases of homicides often becomes synonymous with the body”.

Therefore, speaking the mind of the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India, it is not an invariable rule of criminal jurisprudence that the failure of the police to recover the corpus delecti will render the prosecution case doubtful entitling the accused to acquittal on benefit of doubt. It is only one of the relevant factors to be considered along with all other attendant facts and circumstances to arrive at a finding based on reasonability and probability based on normal human prudence and behaviour.

How essential is Victim’s Dead Body?

Discovery of the dead body of the victim bearing physical evidence of violence has never been considered as the only mode of proving the corpus delicti in murder. Indeed, very many cases are of such a nature where the discovery of the dead body is impossible. A blind adherence to this old body doctrine would open the door wide open for many a heinous murderer to escape with impunity simply because they were cunning and clever enough to destroy the body of their victim.

In Rishipal Singh vs State Of Uttarkhand Case, the in the face of absence of body, the only major piece of circumstantial evidence the prosecution was relying upon was the statement of prosecution witness that the accused was last seen in a car with the victim. However the same could not be corroborated with the help of other circumstantial evidence, leaving the chain of circumstances incomplete and resulting in the acquittal of the appellant/accused.

How can one establish Corpus Delicti?

To prove the corpus delicti, a prosecutor in a criminal case is required to show that there was:

· injury, loss, or harm to someone; and

· illegal activity caused it.

ILLEGAL ACTIVITY + INJURY, LOSS, OR HARM = BODY OF THE CRIME (CORPUS DELICTI)

With this I sign off. Know Your Rights. Get Your Rights.