Tuesday, February 10, 2026
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Ninth Circuit Rejects ‘No Corpus Delicti’ Assertion
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the contention of a Mexican national who was caught after sneaking across the border that she was invalidly convicted of misdemeanor attempted illegal entry on the strength of her confession, alone.
The woman, Andrea Denise Contreras-Vergara, admitted to a Border Patrol agent that she is a citizen of Mexico and had no permission to be in the U.S. Her assertion on appeal was that there was no “corpus delicti,” employing that term in accordance with its actual meaning in law, rather than as it is often used on television courtroom shows connoting that no dead body had been found.
She recited that “corpus delicti”—or “body of the crime”—requires a showing that a crime has been committed, which, the appellant noted, cannot be established on the strength of a confession, alone.
In a memorandum opinion filed Friday, a panel—comprised of Circuit Judges Ana de Alba, Lucy H. Koh, and Kenneth Kiyul Lee—declared that surrounding circumstances corroborated the confession. They wrote:
“In addition to Contreras-Vergara’s confession, the government provided evidence that an agent spotted her at night in a remote location where illegal crossings are common; she scattered and ran when confronted by an agent; she was found lying face down in a bush; and an agent searched a federal database and found no record of Contreras-Vergara crossing into the United States at a designated port of entry. Accordingly, the government presented ‘some’ independent evidence to corroborate her confession.”
Her admissions “along with the circumstances surrounding her mode of entry,” sufficed to established that Contreras-Vergara was an alien lacking permission to be in the United States, the judges said.
The case is U.S. v. Contreras-Vergara, 24-6033.
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