Confession in Law & Literature

Mea culpa belongs to a man and his God. It is a plea that cannot be exacted from free men by human authority.

Abe Fortas 1

I have only one thing to fear in this enterprise; that isn't to say too much or to say untruths; it's rather not to say everything, and to silence truths.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 2   I want to talk about a certain kind of narrative that has long held a particularly problematic status in the law. As a kind of prologue to my remarks, let me mention the record of a criminal case that I stumbled upon in the Yale Law Library. It is from 1819 in Manchester, Vermont, where the disappearance of the cantankerous Russell Colvin led to an accusation that his feuding neighbors, Stephen and Jesse Boorn, had murdered him - to which, after their conviction, they eventually confessed, only to have it discovered that