Inculpatory Statement Not Sufficient Corroborated to Support Conviction

US v. Rodriguez-Soriano: Rodriguez-Soriano bought a pair of guns, which he stated (on the required ATF forms) he was buying for himself. The paperwork said they guns were bought in the same transaction. Sometime later, as a tangent from an unrelated murder investigation, Rodriguez-Soriano was questioned about the guns and said they had been stolen. He also said that they were purchased separately (he needed the second because the first one kept jamming). The officers then told Rodriguez-Soriano that “they knew he had purchased the guns for someone else because the person had told them so,” which was false. Rodriguez-Soriano, after some further badgering from officers about the seriousness of straw purchases, “confessed” that he had purchased the guns for a friend. He confirmed that statement several weeks later and was eventually charged with making false statements on the ATF form that he was the actual buyer of the guns. The only evidence presented at trial was from the store where the guns were purchased and Rodriguez-Soriano’s statements. He was convicted.

On appeal, a divided Fourth Circuit reversed Rodriguez-Soriano’s conviction. The court held that “Rodriguez-Soriano’s confession, without additional corroborative evidence, was insufficient to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Noting that corroborative evidence for confessions isn’t a high bar to clear, “there must be substantial independent evidence that the offense has been committed in the first place.” In this case there was “no corroboration demonstrating that the transaction was a straw purchase,” as the “ATF forms and the testimony of the representative of a licensed firearm dealer, at best, prove only that he made a facially legal purchase of two firearms.” The Government’s attempts at corroboration failed “because all the evidence . . .arises from [Rodriguez-Soriano's] statements to law enforcement.” Even the fact that Rodriguez-Soriano no longer had the guns came from his statements.

Judge Richardson dissented, arguing that the majority “rewrites” the corroboration rule, “reviving and expanding the old corpus delicti doctrine by demanding evidentiary proof, independent of his many admissions, that Rodriguez-Soriano violated each element of the crime.”

Congrats to the Defender office in ED VA on the win!