A confession but no body: Is that enough to convict?

Somewhere at Pine Bend Landfill, under 30 feet of dirt and trash, police believe there lies the skeleton of a slain baby, but they can't recover it. In a rare verdict, the baby girl's mother was convicted in 2008 of a murder in which a body wasn't found.

Now, in a highly unusual appeal to the state Supreme Court, the mother's attorney argues that Samantha Heiges of Burnsville was wrongfully convicted because state law says a person cannot be convicted solely on a confession; there must be separate evidence.

Attorney Deborah Ellis says not only is there no body, but nobody has been able to prove the infant, named Sydney, was born alive, and if she was, how she died. She also contends that three "confessions" to police and two friends should not have been used to corroborate one another.

Many in the legal community are watching the appeal. At issue is whether statements of a young woman, who underwent a traumatic experience and attempted suicide a week after giving birth, should be believed.

"Confessions are incredibly powerful evidence, but confessions are not always accurate," said Bradford Colbert, adjunct professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. "People confess for all sorts of reasons -- because they were coerced, because they're crazy, because they're feeling guilty -- and we don't want to convict people unless the confessions are truthful."

What the justices decide could determine how murder cases without a body are prosecuted.

"That is probably one of the most significant aspects to the case," said Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom, whose office prosecuted Heiges, and whose career includes one of the state's most high-profile homicide cases in which no body was found: the acquittal of a man accused of killing 5-year-old Corrine Erstad in 1992.

Although he recanted his confession, Blom was convicted and sentenced to life for kidnapping and murdering Poirier.

Justices are weighing whether Heiges' conviction violated two Minnesota murder statutes and whether there was enough evidence for the verdict. Oral arguments were in January; a ruling is expected in coming months. The Minnesota Court of Appeals last year upheld the second-degree intentional murder conviction in a split decision.

Heiges is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

Murder cases involving newborns are even rarer and difficult because there must be evidence that the baby was born alive, defense attorney Ellis said.

Prosecutor Scott Hersey argued that Heiges had told a friend of her plan to kill her baby even before the birth and gave details to others afterward.

He said that contrary to what the defense says, one confession can corroborate another.

"The purpose of corroborating a confession is to prevent wrongful convictions based on false confessions," Colbert said. But corroborating confessions with other confessions is problematic because both could be false. Just because a statement is repeated more than once does not make it true, he said.

Heiges acknowledged to Burnsville police in 2007 that she drowned her baby in 2005. She said she put the body in a shoebox, then down the garbage chute at her Burnsville apartment building.

Authorities concluded that searching for the compacted remains in the Pine Bend Landfill would have been fruitless two years later -- and dangerous because of flammable methane gases.

A tearful confession

Ellis argued that incriminating words used by prosecutors to describe her "confession" were really the words of a Burnsville police detective.

Heiges first told him that the baby was not born alive -- but after "leading" questioning, Heiges acquiesced that the baby was, for example, "gasping," her attorney said. Heiges acknowledged the officer's words by saying things like "uh huh," which could be interpreted in different ways, Ellis said.

There's no proof the baby was born alive, she contends.

But Heiges made other statements that were "damning," one justice noted during Supreme Court arguments.

Prosecutors maintain that Heiges' 2007 statements to police and friends were properly admitted during trial. In addition to the new boyfriend, office staff from her apartment and some of Heiges' friends told of seeing her pregnant in 2005.

The boyfriend testified that Heiges drowned the baby herself, then told him.

In Inver Grove Heights, a mile west of the Mississippi River, is the 190-acre landfill where baby Sydney is probably entombed.

Operations manager Jeff Brown testified during Heiges' 2008 trial that landfill workers can tell by a grid system where municipal trash is dumped daily, within a 50-yard radius. So they have a general idea where the baby's remains might be.

But, as a medical examiner testified, the remains will have decayed, making it unlikely that pathologists could determine what killed the infant, even if her bones were found.