Opinion ID: 6357297
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Partial Alibi

Text: The respondent claims that, because the petitioner's alibi was only a partial one, even if the jury had credited  that alibi, it nonetheless would have found the petitioner guilty. In support of this contention, the respondent observes that, at trial, the state's attorney argued, and the jury was instructed, that the jury could accept the petitioner's alibi and still find the petitioner guilty. Although perhaps superficially appealing, this argument does not hold up upon closer examination. We agree that, as a general rule, partial alibis are unconvincing. Indeed, it has been argued that a partial or incomplete alibi is not really an alibi in the truest sense; see, e.g., Williams v. State , 185 So.3d 1270 , 1271 (Fla. App. 2016) (a partial alibi is no alibi at all [internal quotation marks omitted] ); because it fails to account for a defendant's whereabouts for at least some period of time during which the crime reasonably could have been committed by the defendant. Thus, when a true partial alibi is at issue, it is invariably the case that the defendant just as likely could have committed the crime during a period of time not covered by the alibi. Notably, each and every one of the cases on which the respondent relies falls squarely into this category. As the habeas court explained, however, in the present case, the petitioner's alibi, if believed, establishes that he was not at the crime scene when the substantial weight of the evidence indicates that the victim was murdered. The respondent has identified no case in which a partial alibi was found to exist and in which the state's primary theory of the case, and the only one toward which its evidence was geared, was that the crime most likely occurred during the period of time covered by the defendant's alibi. Accordingly, this case simply does not involve the kind of alibi that courts treat as partial or incomplete. The thin evidentiary reed on which the respondent's partial alibi theory rests is the trial testimony of Harold Wayne Carver II, then the state's chief medical examiner,  who reviewed the 1975 autopsy report and opined that it was within the realm of scientific possibility that the victim died any time between 9:30 p.m. on October 30, 1975, and many hours before she was found the next afternoon. Carver's  testimony establishing this broad time frame, however, does nothing to establish when within that time period the murder actually occurred. Indeed, the state's attorney discounted part of that window of time by conceding that the crime must have been committed no later than 1 a.m. the next morning because, by that time, the victim's family was out looking for her. Insofar as Carver offered any opinion as to when the murder actually occurred within the scientifically possible time frame, he opined that the victim probably was murdered closer to 9:30 p.m. than when she was found the next day. To be sure, the state's attorney observed during closing argument that the state did not have to disprove the petitioner's alibi for the jury to find him guilty, insofar as the autopsy report did not rule out the possibility that the victim was alive as late as 5:30 a.m. on October 31, 1975. However, the state's attorney made no effort to explain to the jury the victim's whereabouts in the one hour and forty-five minutes or so between the time her friends left her to return to their homes and the time the petitioner's alibi established his return home. It is reasonable to conclude that no such effort was made because, as we previously discussed, the substantial weight of the evidence indicated that the victim was murdered between 9:30 and 10 p.m. Indeed, for more than twenty years, that was the state's own theory of when the crime was committed, and no evidence has ever surfaced to undermine that theory. In light of the convincing evidence supporting the theory that the victim was murdered between 9:30 and 10 p.m. and the complete absence of evidence that she was alive but otherwise unseen after that time frame, there  is little wonder that neither the state nor the respondent has ever articulated a plausible theory to support the possibility that she was murdered after 11 p.m. Accordingly, the respondent's attempt to negate the significance of the alibi under a partial alibi theory is unavailing.