John T. Baldwin Staff Sergeant U.S. Air Force Convicted Sex Offender Indecent Acts With A Child

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Name: John T. Baldwin

Case: United States v. Baldwin No. 00-6002 Crim. App. No. 2000-02

Date Of Appeal: January 9, 2001

Plea: Guilty

Charges: Indecent Acts With A Child

Military Branch: U.S. Air Force

Listed In National Sex Offenders Registry? NO

After turning himself in to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), appellant provided a detailed confession concerning the acts with which he was charged. Appellant’s handwritten statement to AFOSI included the following admissions:

(1) on April 24, appellant’s wife "walked in on" him during one of the occasions on which he touched his daughter’s genitals while she was asleep in her bedroom;

(2) appellant "immediately" sought help from the chaplain; and

(3) the chaplain referred appellant to a family therapist.

At trial, appellant moved to suppress this confession on the ground that his statement was not corroborated adequately under Mil.R.Evid. 304(g), which provides:

An admission or a confession of the accused may be considered as evidence against the accused on the question of guilt or innocence only if independent evidence, either direct or circumstantial, has been introduced that corroborates the essential facts admitted to justify sufficiently an inference of their truth.

We agree with the court below that the facts specifically enumerated by the military judge adequately corroborate those contained in appellant’s written confession. The military judge described a specific interaction between appellant and his wife on the night of April 24, which began when she found him in the child-victim’s bedroom, and which culminated with appellant revealing to his wife his own history of being molested as a child. This finding sufficiently corroborates the truth of appellant’s own statement that his wife "walked in on" him while he was molesting the child in the child’s bedroom on April 24.

The military judge’s finding that two days after this incident appellant sought professional counseling with a chaplain, who then referred him to a therapist, adequately corroborated the truth of appellant’s assertion that he immediately sought help from a chaplain, who then referred him to a therapist.

In light of the direct corroborative value of the facts found by the military judge with respect to the essential facts contained in appellant’s written confession, we agree with the court below that the military judge erred in suppressing the confession under Mil.R.Evid. 304(g). The findings made by the military judge, which raised an inference of truth as to the essential facts admitted, were legally sufficient to corroborate appellant’s confession.

In view of our conclusion that the military judge’s determination was incorrect as a matter of law, we need not reach the second granted issue regarding the ability of the lower court to consider facts in addition to those found by the military judge in evaluating corroborating evidence.