By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK – The Arkansas Court of Appeals overturned a man’s sexual assault conviction Wednesday but hinted the law on which its decision was based is outdated and may need to be repealed.

The court overturned Marvin Goodsell’s conviction in Faulkner County Circuit Court on four counts of second-degree sexual assault, finding that the state failed to prove a crime occurred.

Under Arkansas law, a confession of a defendant, unless made in open court, “will not warrant a conviction unless accompanied with other proof that the offense was committed.”

The Court of Appeals said Goodsell’s conviction was based on a statement he made to police in which he admitted assaulting two girls, but the state did not present “other proof” that the assaults occurred. The two girls initially told police Goodsell assaulted them, but they recanted their accusations before the trial, the court said.

The appeals court appeared reluctant to rule for Goodsell, saying it was bound by the other-proof requirement to overturn his conviction but adding, “we question the necessity of this stringent corroboration requirement.”

The opinion, written by Judge D.P. Marshall Jr., noted that in a 1988 case, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the requirement of corroboration of a defendant’s statement was “a vestige of a time when brutal methods were commonly used to extract confessions, sometimes to crimes that had not been committed.”

Marshall wrote that some jurisdictions, including the federal court system, have done away with the rule, requiring instead “substantial independent evidence which would tend to establish the trustworthiness of the statement.”

Changing the law in Arkansas would require legislative action or an Arkansas Supreme Court ruling, Marshall wrote.