Umm...

Let's see:

Sophomores Jerome Randle, 20, and James Patrick Christopher, 19, guards for the Bears, allegedly drove up next to two pedestrians on Channing Way between Telegraph Avenue and Bowditch Street, held out a silver object later identified as a cell phone and demanded money at 12:30 a.m. last Sunday, said UCPD Assistant Chief Mitch Celaya.

...

The two basketball players were arrested on suspicion of robbery, booked at the Berkeley Jail Facility, and later bailed out, Celaya said.

"What the individuals said is they were just scaring people. They were having fun and scaring people and didn't mean to rob anybody," Celaya said.

Randle and Christopher were interviewed and it was discovered this may not have been the first time they had engaged in similar activity, Celaya said.

"They alluded that they have done that a couple times, although we haven't found any other individuals that have reported being the objects of their games," he said.

Officials at the Alameda County District Attorney's office said no charges were filed against Randle and Christopher because of insufficient evidence.

Oh, well, if they're just scaring people, I guess it's fine. I didn't realize doing things like this was legal. Or if it's illegal, that a confession is not sufficient evidence.

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 7/09/2007 03:28:00 PM #
Comments (1)

. . .

Comments:

Actually, a confession is not sufficient evidence. It's commonly called the "corpus cop-out rule". (You will probably not learn it at Boalt. (I certainly didn't. Too much time discussing "policy" and how to turn the world into a hippie paradise.)) Basically, you need to prove all the elements of the offense independently of any confession. You can then use the confession to prove the identity of the perpetrator, and to reinforce the evidence you already put on to establish the corpus delicti.

Having said that, it would surprise me that no charges were filed. But then, we're going off of a news report (and one from the Daily Cal, at that. The big newspapers get it wrong about half the time, if they're good, so I wouldn't rely on the Daily Cal for critical details. In this case, "insufficient evidence" could be an inability to find the victims, for example. (After all, this is the Alameda DA, which is one of the better (if not the best) DA's offices in the state. It's not as if we were talking about the spineless politicos in the SFDA's office.)

# posted by  Anonymous : 7:38 PM, July 11, 2007

 

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