Strictly Legal

On May 1st, President Barack Obama announced to the world that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden.  Among the predictable reactions was a large dose of skepticism, especially when the White House later briefed that bin Laden had been buried at sea.  Naysayers across the globe demanded proof, namely photos or videos of bin Laden’s body. As of this writing, President Obama has decided not to release the purportedly grisly photographs.The clamor to see “the body” reminds me of the term corpus delicti.  It is derived from Latin for body (corpus) and crime (delictum), so literally it means “the body of the crime.”  As a legal term, corpus delicti has evolved to mean the body of evidence to prove a crime. So, for homicide it could be a literal corpus (but doesn’t have to be—more on that later).  In other instances, however, the corpus delicti could be evidence like stolen items (for larceny) or a torched house (for arson).  Many state jurisdictions still follow the common law corpu