Corpus Delecti Rule

I represented a young man who was charged with driving while impaired. He had ran off the road , drove a considerable distance into the woods, and was eventually stopped by a tree. When the police arrived, it was immediately apparent that he was impaired (he later blew more than double the legal limit). The officer asked what happened. My client provided the officer with the details of the incident including his drinking, his belief that he fell asleep while driving, and that he had no passengers in his vehicle. I argued that my client's confession without other evidence was not enough to establish the element of driving in the crime of driving while impaired. Though you would think that the defendants confession that he had an accident and he had no passengers would be enough, the law says that is not enough. The officer admitted that when he arrived at the scene several people were standing around along with my client and that it was not my client's vehicle that had been wrecked. The Judge ruled (under State v. Trexler) that the officer had not performed a complete enough investigation of the accident, that the State had not proven that my client was driving, and found my client not guilty of driving while impaired.