United States v. Jose Vega-Limon

Appellant was convicted in a court trial of conspiracy to smuggle, transport, conceal, harbor and shield illegal aliens, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 and 8 U.S.C. § 1324 . We affirm.

1. Appellant correctly points out that an accused cannot be convicted on his uncorroborated confession alone (Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 152 , 75 S.Ct. 194 , 99 L.Ed. 192 (1954)), and that the corpus delicti must be established wholly or in part by independent evidence. See Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 93 , 75 S.Ct. 158 , 99 L.Ed. 101 (1954). But appellant misapplies Smith when he contends that, because an “intangible” crime is involved in this case as in Smith , the corroborative evidence must not only confirm the trustworthiness of appellant’s confession but also implicate appellant himself. The crime charged in Smith was tax evasion. Because of the nature of that offense the corroborative evidence necessarily implicated the accused, since the fact of the crime (the corpus delicti) was inseparably bound up with defendant’s identity. Here, by contrast, a conspiracy was charged that involved three persons, in addition to appellant. The existence of a conspiracy could be…