Opinion ID: 1381682
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: Justice Thomas has filed a concurring opinion herein where he urges that a motion for a verdict of acquittal made at the end of the State's case should not be waived if the defendant, after receiving an adverse ruling on the motion, should decide to go forward with evidence in his or her own behalf. I agree with these thoughts. The rule should be as he suggests. It does not matter very much in this case whether the rule of our prior holdings in Grabill, Seyle, Jones and Rinehart, the rule adopted by the majority, or the rule suggested by Justice Thomas is utilized. The question in all instances is one of sufficiency of the evidence. By introducing evidence in his own behalf in the case at bar, the defendant did nothing to fill in the gaping holes in the fabric of the State's case. The State did not make a prima facie case in its case in chief and, when all the evidence was in, there was insufficient evidence to support a guilty verdict. We said in Rinehart v. State, supra: `The oft-repeated rule by which we test the sufficiency of evidence on appeal of a criminal matter is that we examine and accept as true the evidence of the prosecution, leaving out of consideration entirely the evidence of the defendant in conflict therewith, and we give to the evidence of the prosecution every favorable inference which may reasonably and fairly be drawn therefrom. Stated another way  it is not whether the evidence establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt for us, but rather whether it is sufficient to form the basis for a reasonable inference of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to be drawn by the jury when the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the State. [Citations.]' Harvey v. State, Wyo., 596 P.2d 1386, 1387 (1979). 641 P.2d at 194. See Cloman v. State, supra; Grabill v. State, supra. In the instant matter, is the evidence sufficient to form a reasonable inference of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt when viewed in the light most favorable to the State? I say no. A reasonable inference of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be formulated upon opinion evidence of nonexperts [7] who have drawn their conclusions from faulty hypotheses. Furthermore, the rule announced in our previous child-abuse cases has not been complied with because qualified experts have not testified in this case that the trauma was inflicted by abusing the child. (See Grabill, supra, Seyle, supra, Jones, supra, and Rinehart, supra.) The most that can be said is that, given some but not all of the possibilities  given inaccurate physical facts about the bathtub  given the wrong age of the child  the doctors said that, in their opinion, the burns were not incurred as the defendant said they were. This is insufficient to uphold a guilty verdict under the reasonable-doubt concept. I would reverse.