Comment on Maine high court denies appeal by man convicted of killing infant son in 1979

PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday denied an appeal by a Brunswick man convicted of killing his infant son in 1979. Attorneys for Burton “Ben” Hagar, now 64, of Farmington argued in the appeal that the state’s “corpus delecti” law, which states that a confession alone is not enough evidence to convict someone, and that prosecutors must provide other evidence of a crime, should be amended to mirror the federal law, which requires the court to also weigh the credibility of the additional evidence and find that it is reliable. Hagar was arrested April 7, 2017, following his indictment on murder charges by a Cumberland County grand jury.