Allen v. Commonwealth, 752 S.E.2d 856

Richard Warren Allen voluntarily confessed to police that he had touched his four-year-old grandson’s genital area while the child was sleeping, masturbated while rubbing the child’s feet, and allowed the child to touch his erect penis during wrestling episodes.
Allen waived a jury, was tried in circuit court, convicted of aggravated sexual battery, and sentenced to an active term with probation.
The only independent non-confession testimony at trial was from Allen’s daughter who described living arrangements, frequent unsupervised time between Allen and the grandson, occasions when the grandson slept in Allen’s bed, and that they sometimes wrestled.
The Commonwealth relied on Allen’s extrajudicial confession plus the daughter’s testimony to prove the corpus delicti; Allen argued the confession lacked the required independent corroboration.
The Court of Appeals affirmed; the Supreme Court of Virginia reversed, holding the daughter’s testimony did not provide the constitutionally required "slight corroboration" of the corpus delicti and vacated and dismissed the indictment.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the Commonwealth presented independent evidence that slightly corroborated the corpus delicti of aggravated sexual battery so confession alone could support conviction	Commonwealth: Daughter’s testimony (opportunity, sleeping together, wrestling) plus confession suffices as slight corroboration	Allen: Daughter’s testimony only shows opportunity and is as consistent with innocence as guilt; confession must be corroborated by evidence aliunde	Held: No — daughter’s testimony amounted only to opportunity and did not slightly corroborate the confession; conviction reversed and indictment dismissed
Sufficiency of the evidence to convict absent corpus delicti corroboration	Commonwealth: Totality (confession + circumstantial testimony) supports conviction	Allen: Conviction cannot rest on uncorroborated extrajudicial confession	Held: Because corpus delicti requirement not met, verdict lacks sufficient evidence; conviction vacated

Cherrix v. Commonwealth, 257 Va. 292 (1999) (only slight corroboration of confession required to establish corpus delicti)
Watkins v. Commonwealth, 238 Va. 341 (1989) (an accused cannot be convicted solely on uncorroborated extrajudicial confession)
Phillips v. Commonwealth, 202 Va. 207 (1960) (independent evidence must do more than show opportunity and cannot be "just as consistent" with noncommission)
Caminade v. Commonwealth, 230 Va. 505 (1986) (opportunity/proximity alone is insufficient corroboration)
Moore v. Commonwealth, 132 Va. 741 (1922) (corpus delicti rule requires proof independent of confession)
Crawford v. Commonwealth, 281 Va. 84 (2011) (standard of review for sufficiency challenges)