Opinion ID: 1636299
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutionality of Substantial-Evidence Standard of Review

Text: The appellant next appears to contend that the oft-repeated standard of appellate review for sufficiency of the evidence, the substantial-evidence standard, is unconstitutional under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). While his argument is not entirely clear, he seems to assert that this Court erroneously concluded in Jones v. State, 269 Ark. 119, 598 S.W.2d 748 (1980), that the substantial-evidence standard is consistent with the rational fact-finder standard enunciated in Jackson , and that his case, if affirmed on the allegedly scant evidence in the record, illustrates that the substantial-evidence standard does not adequately insure that the jury found he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We must assume, then, that appellant is urging this Court to overrule Jones and explicitly adopt the rational fact-finder standard and that, under that purportedly more demanding standard of review, to hold that insufficient evidence supports his convictions for aggravated robbery. For the following reasons, we decline appellant's apparent invitation to overrule Jones , and we affirm appellant's conviction. This Court actually held in Jones that the substantial-evidence standard is consistent with the rational fact-finder standard enunciated in Jackson . In Jackson , the United States Supreme Court rejected a standard of review that required only an examination of whether there was any evidence to support a conviction in favor of a standard which, instead, insured that the fact-finder rationally applied the standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or, in other words, that the evidence of guilt was convincing to a point that any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 317, 318-19, 99 S.Ct. 2781. The substantial-evidence standard, while not explicitly reciting the standard from Jackson word for word, requires that evidence supporting a conviction must compel reasonable minds to a conclusion, see, e.g. Rutledge v. State, 345 Ark. 243, 45 S.W.3d 825 (2001), and force or induce the mind to pass beyond suspicion or conjecture, see Jones, 269 Ark. at 120, 598 S.W.2d at 749, and, thereby, ensures that the evidence was convincing to a point that any rational fact-finder could have found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This Court recently reaffirmed Jones , and, moreover, again declined to explicitly adopt the rational fact-finder test. See Hale v. State, 343 Ark. 62, 31 S.W.3d 850 (2000). In short, because the Court's standard of review is correct, and, because substantial evidence supports the appellant's convictions, we affirm.