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A fact from Murder conviction without a body appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 24 December 2008, and was viewed approximately 4,000 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
How can a view be mistaken? If that is the view, it is what it is. At least one has to clearly define against what facts the view is mistaken. If "no body, no murder" was a de facto guideline in English courts, then it is not a "mistaken view" but common practice. Calling it "mistaken view" sounds like ideologically driven judgement.
It's legally mistaken because there was and is no basis in English law for any such belief: see the very first sentence in the History section, and the inline citation given there. I would love to see a specific source setting out clearly the actual effect of the belief, but haven't so far been able to find any detailed discussion of that - hence the template at the top of the article. If you know of any source, please say. MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:51, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible that a murder could only be proved in New York State at around the turn of the 20th century by the existence of a body. The sensational story "The Corpus Delicti" (Gutenberg link) [1] by Melville Davidson Post is based on this purported flaw in the New York statutes. Modern reviews of the story can be found here [2] and here [3] . The second article makes the claim that the story so outraged people that the law was changed to allow proof of a murder by circumstantial evidence. The problem could have been that the New York legislature, when passing a statute that overruled the common law, mistook "the corpus delicti" to mean the body of the victim, not the body of the crime; the same mistake that some murderers made, as cited in the article.
I think that some mention of this fiction should be added to the article. The claim made at the top of the story that this is (was) the prevailing law, may or may not be true, but the story in any event illustrates the error that people have fallen into about "the corpus delicti."
The author of this story and others was an experienced lawyer and his stories intentionally implied that some laws were flawed and needed revision. His made his lawyer protagonist, Randolph Mason, a sneering and amoral person (somewhat resembling the Devil himself) who instructed his clients how to commit crimes and get away with them.
Incidentally, it is said that Perry Mason took his name from Randolph Mason, and Erle Stanley Gardner's "Court of Last Resort" took its name from Randolph Mason's claim to be "The Man of Last Resort." Wastrel Way (talk) 12:01, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
