Court Opinion

ID: 9427597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:18.058819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.305995
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I join fully in the Court’s opinion reversing the judgment under review. In the necessarily detailed step-by-step analysis of the legal issues, the central and controlling facts of a case often can become lost. The “underbrush” of finely tuned legal analysis of complex issues tends to bury the facts.
On this record, the jury could readily have reached the same result without benefit of the challenged statutory presumption ; here it reached what was rather obviously a compromise verdict. Even without relying on evidence that two people had been seen placing something in the car trunk shortly before respondents occupied it, and that a machinegun and a package of heroin were soon after found in that trunk, the jury apparently decided that it was enough to hold the passengers to knowledge of the two handguns which were in *168such plain view that the officer could see them from outside the car. Reasonable jurors could reasonably find that what the officer could see from outside, the passengers within the car could hardly miss seeing. Courts have long held that in the practical business of deciding cases the factfinders, not unlike negotiators, are permitted the luxury of verdicts reached by compromise.