Johnny Depp’s recent trial comes to mind – he openly admitted to doing cocaine but as far as I’m aware no action was taken
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In the United States, a general criminal law principle known as the *corpus delicti* rule provides that a confession, standing alone, isn’t enough for a conviction. It’s designed to prevent wrongful convictions, implicitly acknowledging the phenomenon of false confessions.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-confession-alone-enough-convict-defendant.html
If Johnny Depp had confessed to a more serious crime, the police would have had to investigate and gather more evidence to bring him to trial. For a drug use case, as a practical matter, it’s not worth the effort.
FUN FACT: Some murderers, like notorious Mafia hit man Roy DeMeo, erroneously believe that the *corpus delicti* rule means that if no one can find the corpse, they can’t be convicted of murder. So DeMeo carefully developed a factory-like approach for butchering and disposing of all his murdered corpses. He flew into a near-murderous rage when one member of his crew accidentally dropped the corpse’s ear, and it fell through the cracks of DeMeo’s floor.
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