When is a Good Time to Tell Your Family Aliens are Real?
Things To Talk About When You’re Actively Dying
Every week in my newsletter, I answer a legal question from readers.
This week’s question is from Ryan H. who asks:
Two-part question!
1. How do death bed confessions work? As people approach death in general, cognitive abilities tend to deteriorate as well. If there is evidence of decreased cognitive function, are statements taken more or less seriously? Are the things they admit to used for evidence or put into the public record for unsolved crimes? What if they were a person of interest?
2. Second part, what if the dying person discloses classified information? For example, let’s say Grandpa J Allen Hynek gushes out all of this info about UFOs to his family/nurses before passing away. Are they now legally bound to keep that information to themselves, or can they disclose this whenever because they did not take an oath/sign papers agreeing to keep the UFO information confidential? (I assume the medical staff would need to maintain confidentiality regardless due to HIPPA). Thanks a bunch!
Great questions, Ryan! Let’s break them down.
How Do Death Bed Confessions Work?
First, the concept of a deathbed confession is not really a legal one. Though people can confess to crimes as they’re dying, they can just as easily confess the location of a hidden family treasure, or that they never really liked their third child, or that they were secretly in love with someone besides their spouse all along.
Death Bed Confessions in Court
In the legal sense, death bed confessions can be used in court as an exception to the hearsay rule, but only in limited circumstances. The confusing and convoluted legal definition of hearsay is generally accepted as “an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” In normal human speak, it is he-said, she-said offered as evidence at trial to prove that a fact is true.
For instance, if you saw me do a crime, you could testify to that fact, right? But what if you told your mom that you saw me do a crime, then the prosecutors wanted your mom to testify? That wouldn’t fly under the prohibition on hearsay. Your mom is testifying about something you said to her; not something she saw.
This is important because we all have a Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against us. This means having a meaningful opportunity to cross-examine someone who testifies against you. If your mom wants to testify that you told her that I did a crime, that violates my constitutional right because I wouldn’t have an opportunity to ask you — the witness to my actions — any questions.
Exceptions to Hearsay
But what if you weren’t available to testify that I did the crime, and all the prosecutor had to go on was your mom’s testimony? Under the Federal Rules of Evidence (“FRE”), which many states’ rules of evidence mirror, there are certain exceptions to hearsay when the declarant — in this case, you — are unavailable. One of these is a dying declaration. The FRE call it a “Statement Under the Belief of Imminent Death”.
In a prosecution for homicide, a statement from the victim who believes that they are imminently dying, is admissible if the statement is about the cause or circumstances of the victim’s death.
This means if the crime that you saw me do was attacking you so hard you thought you were going to immediately die (sorry about that!!), then a statement you make to your mom about how you ended up wounded would be admissible.
If there is evidence of decreased cognitive function, are statements taken more or less seriously?
The whole theory behind dying declarations are that a dying person has no reason to lie. A 1789 case in England called The King v. Woodcock allowed testimony of a dying woman about the cause of her death (beating by her husband, sadly). The court reasoned that “when the party is at the point of death, and when every hope of this world is gone: when every motive to falsehood is silenced, and the mind is induced by the most powerful considerations to speak the truth.”
The idea of allowing dying declarations is also related to religion, with courts reasoning that a person on their deathbed is less likely to lie, given they’re quickly on their way to meet the great judge in the sky.
Arguments by legal scholars against dying declarations are in line with your question. Dying declarations are perhaps not as reliable as courts have believed for centuries. Like you asked — what if someone has mentally declined, either before their death or in connection with their imminent death? What if someone has a grudge, are not as religious as courts would hope, and they use their last dying breath to lie about someone else or clear their own name?
Those are the reasons that some legal scholars think dying declarations aren’t trustworthy enough to be automatically considered exceptions to hearsay. Nevertheless, courts still allow them regularly so long as they fit the requirements of the rule.
Are the things they admit used for evidence or put into the public record for unsolved crimes?
Sometimes, yes, information from deathbed confessions can been used to solve unsolved crimes.
This actually happened in New Hampshire in the late 1980s. A 61-year-old man named Clifton Chambers confessed to his daughter, Melissa, that he helped his son, Robert, bury the body of a man Robert killed in a fight. Clifton instructed Melissa to tell the police his story once he was dead. The next day, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died.
Melissa fulfilled her father’s wishes, telling police that the now-dead man confessed to her that he helped bury the body of the man his own son (and her brother) killed. Police obtained a search warrant, dug up the son’s front yard, and 25 feet in the ground found the body of the victim, Russell Bean, who had been buried for a decade.
Though the daughter’s report led to the search warrant and the discovery of the body, a grand jury failed to indict Robert Chambers because of lack of admissible evidence.
In that case, the police acted on the death bed confession of the elder Chambers, but the court was not able to admit it as evidence since it was hearsay that did not fall into an exception. It was not made imminently, as Papa Chambers didn’t die until a day after saying it. It was also not regarding the circumstances of his death.
Though he was not indicted, the younger Mr. Chambers was later sentenced to 25 years in jail for sexual assault, totally unrelated to the murder he allegedly committed decades earlier.
In this case, the confession “solved” the case in a sense, although it did not lead to a conviction.
What if the death bed confessor was a person of interest?
This actually happened in the JonBenét Ramsey case. Glenn Meyer lived in the basement of the house across the street from the Ramseys and was, according to his ex-wife, “obsessed” with JonBenét. An attendee at the party the Ramseys threw the night of JonBenét’s murder confessed on her death bed that she saw Meyer approaching the Ramsey house the night of the party. John Ramsey also remembers Meyer approaching the house that night, but didn’t recall why.
Once Meyer died, his ex-wife Charlotte Hey told the National Enquirer that her ex-husband confessed to killing JonBenét. (Warning: link contains graphic photos).
For some, this answered the question of who killed JonBenét Ramsey. Others think it was fabricated by the ex-wife for revenge. Still yet, even if Meyer did confess, the National Enquirer reported he was suffering from dementia and had developed an obsession with JonBenet in his later years.
You can see the issue with a death bed confession in this case. It doesn’t really “solve” anything. Even if Meyer was telling the truth, he is dead and can never be convicted.
Now to your second question…
What if the dying person discloses classified information?
The espionage statute makes intentionally disclosing classified information without authorization a federal crime. Conviction can result in a jail sentence of up to ten years in prison, a fine, or could treason charges.
If, however, you’re dying, I don’t suppose it much matters. Spill all the classified beans you want. The federal government has no jurisdiction in the afterlife.
FOR EXAMPLE: let’s say Grandpa J Allen Hynek gushes out all of this info about UFOs to his family/nurses before passing away. Are they now legally bound to keep that information to themselves, or can they disclose this whenever because they did not take an oath/sign papers agreeing to keep the UFO information confidential?
In this example, let’s assume Grandpa Hynek has security clearance and breached it in revealing the information to his family/nurses. His family would then be in possession of government secrets. Under the espionage statute at 18 USC Section 793, the federal government contends that it can prosecute both government officials and private citizens for releasing certain types of classified information.
Section 793(e) covers folks with “unauthorized possession” of information, and makes it a crime to willfully communicate, deliver, or transmit information relating to the national defense that the person has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States to “any person not entitled to receive it.” That’s a pretty broad law. Some commentators believe it is overly broad, so much so that it violates the First Amendment.
This means that, even though the family members didn’t sign an oath or anything, the broad federal statute covering classified information may make them criminally liable should they disclose it to “any person not entitled to receive it.”
Somebody better tell the Hynek family to keep those alien secrets to themselves!
Thanks for the questions, Ryan!
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