I read the appellate opinions almost every day.
And occasionally I wonder why some defendants even bother to appeal their convictions.
Here’s an example.
A defendant allegedly crashed his car in Cape Cod.
Police claim that when they arrived the defendant’s car was resting on a curb completely blocked one side of the road.
The passenger-side tire was detached and wedged underneath the vehicle.
Police allegedly found beer cans along the side of the road and inside the defendant’s car.
When police questioned the driver, he allegedly told them that, earlier in the evening, he attended a wake in West Roxbury and he was unsure how he ended up in Cape Cod.
Later on, during the booking process, the defendant allegedly told police that he had “multiple” shots of Fireball Whiskey.
Ultimately the police charged the man with OUI.
He disputed the charge at a bench trial and lost.
He then appealed the ruling claiming, in part, that his admissions alone were not enough to convict him.
In Massachusetts admissions must be corroborated by independent evidence.
But the corroboration of an admission or confession is low.
In fact, there need only be “some evidence, besides the confession, that the criminal act was committed by someone, that is, that the crime was real and not imaginary.” Commonwealth v. Forde, 392 Mass. 453, 458 (1984).
The Appeals Court rejected the defendant’s argument.
In the slip opinion, the panel writes,
Here, viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the factfinder was entitled to find that the defendant’s admission that he had operated3 the car and had consumed alcohol was sufficiently corroborated. When the Falmouth police arrived at the scene of the accident, they discovered the defendant’s disabled car resting on a curb, completely blocking the northbound lane of the road. The defendant was standing by the open driver’s side door of the sedan, and the front passenger’s side tire was completely detached and wedged underneath the car. No one else was present in the car or nearby. These circumstances provided the requisite corroboration that the crime was “real and not imaginary.” Forde, 392 Mass. at 458.
The full text of the slip opinion is attached below.