PEOPLE OF MI V JEFFREY SCOTT STANGE
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STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN,
UNPUBLISHED
March 29, 2002
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v
No. 235847
Washtenaw Circuit Court
LC No. 00-001963-FH
JEFFREY SCOTT STANGE,
Defendant-Appellee.
Before: Sawyer, P.J., and Murphy and Hoekstra, JJ.
SAWYER, P.J. (concurring).
As the majority acknowledges, the prosecutor did not raise below the admission versus
confession issue. Accordingly, while I agree with the result reached by the majority, I do not
believe that it should be based on that issue. Rather, I would address the issue of compliance
with the corpus delicti rule.
The prosecutor argues that the trial court incorrectly determined that the prosecutor could
not demonstrate the corpus delicti for manslaughter. I agree.
The corpus delicti of a manslaughter, like other homicides, is established by showing a
death at the hands of a criminal agency. People v Bryant, 129 Mich App 574, 583; 342 NW2d
86 (1983). The prosecutor is not required to prove every element of the crime before defendant’s
statements can be introduced. People v Williams, 422 Mich 381, 391-392; 373 NW2d 567
(1985).
It is undisputed that the victim died; therefore, the inquiry in the case involves whether
the prosecutor can establish, independent of defendant’s statement, that the death was the result
of a criminal agency. The essence of defendant’s argument, and the trial court’s decision, is that
running a stop sign is, in and of itself, only a civil infraction. MCL 257.649(6), (8). Therefore,
defendant argues, and the trial court agreed, there was no “criminal agency” which produced the
death. Rather, it is the fact of the death (as the result of a civil infraction) which produced the
crime. This presents what appears to be a novel question: whether the “criminal agency” aspect
of the corpus delicti rule requires that the defendant’s actions constitute a crime independent of
the harm caused to the victim. I believe that defendant and the trial court take an unreasonably
narrow view of the corpus delicti rule.
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It is certainly true that it is frequently the case in a criminal homicide that the defendant’s
actions would constitute a crime even if the victim did not die. For example, if a defendant
intentionally shoots the victim and the victim does not die, the defendant will still be guilty of a
criminal assault. However, that is not necessarily the case where the mens rea required is one
other than intentional or willful. Defendant’s position would, in cases where the mens rea is
recklessness, carelessness or negligence, essentially cause a defendant’s statements to be
inadmissible under the corpus delicti rule unless the prosecutor could prove the defendant’s guilt
independent of his statement (and rendering his statement merely cumulative). I do not believe
that it reasonably serves the purpose of the corpus delicti rule to require that the defendant’s
actions constitute a crime independent of whether the victim dies.
As discussed above, the primary purpose of the corpus delicti rule is to preclude
conviction for a criminal homicide where none was committed, such as where there is a
disappearance, but not a death, or the death was by accidental means. McMahan, supra at 550.
Thus, the focus is not on whether the defendant’s actions were criminal even absent the victim’s
death. Rather, the focus is on whether someone’s actions (presumably the defendant’s) caused
the death.
Indeed, once the corpus delicti has been established, it is permissible to use the
defendant’s statement to establish what degree of homicide has been committed. Williams,
supra at 392; Hughey, supra at 589. Justice Ryan’s reasoning in Williams, supra at 391, on this
point is particularly helpful:
The logic of the [corpus deliciti] rule is not served by extending it to
require proof, aliunde the defendant’s confession, not only that a particular
deceased lost his life and that the loss is a result of criminal agency but, in
addition, proof of the aggravating circumstances which move the seriousness of
the crime up the scale of criminal accountability (measured by the severity of the
penalty) from manslaughter to second-degree murder or to first-degree murder.
Whatever the aggravating circumstances which constitute a crime, second-degree
murder instead of manslaughter, or first-degree murder instead of second-degree
murder, the danger that a defendant would confess to a criminal killing which
never occurred is adequately obviated when it is shown, other than by the
accused’s confession, that the deceased victim died as a result of a criminal
agency.
Similarly, there is no danger in a situation such as the case at bar that the defendant will
be confessing to a criminal homicide that never occurred. The prosecutor, independent of
defendant’s statements to the police, will presumably be able to establish that Beatrice Smith
died as a result of injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. Further, the prosecutor will be
able to show, through the testimony of Denise Smith and the investigating officer, that defendant
failed to stop at the stop sign and yield the right-of-way to the Smith vehicle, thus causing the
accident. Thus, what is left for the prosecutor to prove is that defendant possessed the requisite
mens rea (gross negligence for manslaughter). However, as discussed in Williams, supra, the
defendant’s statement may be used to establish the mens rea.
This leads us to People v Watts, 149 Mich App 502; 386 NW2d 565 (1986). In Watts,
the defendant claimed self-defense and argued that his statement to the police should have been
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suppressed under the corpus delicti rule because the prosecutor could not show the malice
element necessary for second-degree murder independent of his statement. The Watts Court
rejected the argument, relying on Williams for the proposition that the defendant’s statement can
be used to establish the malice element. Watts, supra at 513. Further, although Watts did not
discuss the meaning of “criminal agency,” it does illustrate a flaw in defendant’s reasoning in the
case at bar. In a case of self-defense, the defendant’s actions do not constitute a crime
(regardless whether the victim dies). Thus, if we were to accept defendant’s argument, the
logical extension would be that the prosecutor would have to disprove self-defense independent
of the defendant’s confession because, if it does constitute self-defense, there is no criminal
conduct by the defendant to constitute a “criminal agency.” Such a conclusion would negate the
holding in Williams that the defendant’s statement may be used to establish the mens rea.
Turning to this Court’s opinion in People v Martin, 59 Mich App 471; 229 NW2d 805
(1975), overruled in part on other grounds in Jackson Co Prosecutor v Court of Appeals, 394
Mich 527, 528; 232 NW2d 172 (1975), while not directly a corpus delicti case, the opinion in
Martin, supra at 483, did state that the “corpus delicti of manslaughter is established by showing
(1) a dead body, and (2) an unnatural cause of death.” Although courts have traditionally used
the phrase “criminal agency,” I think that perhaps the phrase “an unnatural cause of death” is
more accurately descriptive of what is required to be shown to satisfy the objectives of the
corpus delicti rule. That is, the purpose of the corpus delicti rule is well-served if the concept of
“criminal agency” is equated with “unnatural cause of death.” By requiring the prosecutor to
show an unnatural cause of death, there will be no fear that the defendant is confessing to a
homicide that has not occurred. The prosecutor would have to show that the victim is dead, and
not merely missing, and there is not an innocent explanation for the death, such as the victim
dying of a heart attack.
To some degree, this formulation overlooks the statement in McMahan, supra at 550, that
one of the purposes of the corpus delicti rule is to exclude deaths by accident, but not to the
extent that defendant would suggest. McMahan did not involve an accidental killing, but a
stabbing. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the class of accidental deaths referred to in
McMahan are those that are purely accidental, such as the classic corpus delicti example of the
sailor being swept overboard on a ship at sea by a wave rather than being pushed by another
person. That is, “accident,” as that term was used in McMahan, does not include cases where
there is a criminal homicide caused by negligence.1
This then brings us back to Justice Ryan’s analysis in Williams, supra at 390-391,
wherein the meaning of “corpus delicti” was discussed as follows:
Despite clarification of the early confusion about the meaning of the Latin
idiom corpus delicti as used in homicide cases, there remains, among many
1
See, e.g., People v Jackson, 1 Mich App 207; 135 NW2d 557 (1965). In Jackson, this Court
held that the corpus delicti in a manslaughter case was established where the medical evidence
showed that the skull fracture suffered by the infant victim could not have been inflicted by the
child being dropped or falling out of bed. Jackson, supra at 211, also used the phrase “unnatural
cause of death” rather than “criminal agency,” citing 1 Gillespie, Michigan Criminal Law and
Prcoedure (2d ed), § 23, p 42.
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laymen at least, some lingering misunderstanding that the corpus delicti in such
cases refers to the body of the deceased. It does not, of course, and refers instead
to the body (corpus) of the wrong (delicti), “the loss sustained.”
In criminal homicide prosecutions, the delicti, or essence of the wrong, is
the wrongful taking of a human life, a criminal killing. The Legislature has
distinguished between criminal homicides of differing types and varying severity
of penalty by defining and denominating as different crimes. . . . In all of the . . .
various criminal homicides defined by the Legislature, the corpus delicti of the
crime, the essential wrong, is the “loss sustained”; the taking of a human life by a
criminal agency.
A loss is sustained regardless whether it is the result of an intentional act or a negligent act. In
either case, there is a wrongful death. Including negligent acts producing the wrongful death
satisfies the corpus delicti rule: Where it is shown that there is a wrongful death—a loss
sustained—even by a negligent act, an act which may not even have been a crime absent the
victim’s death, there is no danger that the defendant is confessing to a crime where there has
been no loss sustained.
This brings us full circle: the focus in the application of the corpus delicti rule should not
be on whether the defendant’s actions constitute a crime independent of the victim’s death, but
on whether someone’s actions caused the death. That is, once the prosecutor has demonstrated
that a death has, in fact, occurred and is the result of something other than natural causes or pure
accident (that is, one without human culpability), the prosecutor may introduce the defendant’s
statement to show the defendant’s identity as the perpetrator, as well as the defendant’s mens rea
and thus the exact offense committed.
For the above reasons, I conclude that the phrase “criminal agency,” as used in the corpus
delicti rule in a homicide case, includes a death by unnatural causes or an otherwise wrongful
death and does not require a showing that the defendant’s actions would constitute a crime
independent of the victim’s death. Therefore, the trial court erred in the case at bar in concluding
that, because running a stop sign is a civil infraction rather than a crime, the corpus delicti of
manslaughter could not be shown independent of defendant’s statement. Rather, the prosecutor
could establish, independent of defendant’s statement, that the victim died as the result of
injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. Furthermore, the prosecutor will be able to show
through the testimony of the victim’s daughter and the investigating officer, that defendant
disregarded the stop sign and, therefore, the death was not the result of a nonculpable accident.
Accordingly, the corpus delicti for a homicide was established and, therefore, the prosecutor may
introduce defendant’s statement to establish his mens rea (i.e., as evidence of gross negligence2).
/s/ David H. Sawyer
2
I, of course, offer no opinion on whether defendant’s statement does, in fact, establish such a
mens rea.
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