Court Opinion

ID: 9455265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:16:57.055573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:31.954666
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I respectfully dissent.
This court, of course, cannot usurp the function of the jury in deciding factual issues. Neither can it abdicate its duty to review the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a jury’s determination of guilt.
“The verdict in a criminal case is sustained only when there is ‘relevant evidence from which the jury could properly find or infer, beyond a reasonable doubt,’ that the accused is guilty. Mortensen v. United States, 322 U.S. 369, 374, 64 S.Ct. 1037, 1040, 88 L.Ed. 1331.” (American Tobacco Co. v. United States (1946) 328 U.S. 781, 787 n. 4, 66 S.Ct. 1125, 1128, 90 L.Ed. 1575).
That evidence is missing here.
I can accept the majority’s conclusion that the evidence, albeit thin, was sufficient to have sustained a finding that either Baca or Duran had possession of the heroin and that the possessor dropped it on the sidewalk. But I cannot join in the conclusion that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the jury’s decision that Baca was that possessor.
The sole evidence in the record to which the majority can advert to sustain the jury’s necessary finding that Baca was the possessor is the testimony of Officer Salmon that he saw something shiny in Baca’s coat and the testimony of Inspector Jenkins that the packet of heroin was shiny. That Baca was the possessor depended upon proof that the object Salmon saw in Baca’s coat was the packet of heroin later found on the sidewalk. Officer Salmon was the only witness who saw both the object in Baca’s coat and the heroin packet. He and he alone would have known if he had perceived any resemblance between the two objects. Yet, he did not identify the objects as the same. His testimony was that he could not identify the thing he saw in the coat. He could say only that “it was something shiny.”
The question is: Could the jury permissibly infer that the object in Baca’s coat was the heroin packet from the testimony that the unidentified object in the coat was shiny? I think not. An inference that an identified object is the same as an unidentified object cannot arise from proof alone that both objects are shiny. The quality of shining is not a signature; there is nothing unique or even unusual about it. A decision that the packet of heroin was the object seen *784in Baca’s coat is not based on an inference; it is simply a guess. A guilty verdict cannot be sustained by guesses, first or second hand.
I would reverse the conviction.