Court Opinion

ID: 9604979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:29:11.306087+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:32.574677
License: Public Domain

Benton, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Because evidence of an unrelated crime committed by a third person was inadmissible, I agree that we must reverse the conviction. Accordingly, I concur in Part I of the opinion. I also concur in Part III of the opinion.
*75I do not join in Part II of the opinion. I would reverse the conviction and dismiss the prosecution because the evidence failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Robert B. Hall, Jr. killed his wife.
[I]f the proof relied upon by the Commonwealth is wholly circumstantial, as it here is, then to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt all necessary circumstances proved must be consistent with guilt and inconsistent with innocence. They must overcome the presumption of innocence and exclude all reasonable conclusions inconsistent with that of guilt. To accomplish that, the chain of necessary circumstances must be unbroken and the evidence as a whole must satisfy the guarded judgment that both the corpus delicti and the criminal agency of the accused have been proved to the exclusion of any other rational hypothesis and to a moral certainty.
LaPrade v. Commonwealth, 191 Va. 410, 418, 61 S.E.2d 313, 316 (1950).
Through reconstruction evidence, the Commonwealth attempted to prove that Hall’s wife was killed through criminal means rather than accidentally and that Hall killed his wife. Even accepting the Commonwealth’s hypothesis that her death was not accidental, no evidence proved that Hall knew where his wife had driven the truck when she left the country club or that Hall was at the place where she died that night. Indeed, a witness for the Commonwealth testified that on the evening in question, more than forty-five minutes after Hall’s wife left the country club, only one vehicle passed her house travelling toward the end of the country road. That vehicle was a truck resembling the one driven by Hall’s wife. She saw no other vehicles pass her house until several police vehicles came.
On brief, the Commonwealth speculates that Hall “was surprised to find that his wife was not home,” drove his jeep into the night looking for her, and found her on the dead end road in the next county “on the supposition that his inebriated wife may have turned in the wrong direction and lost her way.” That hypothesis is pure speculation. By suggesting to the jury that the distance (from the country club, to Hall’s home, to the place where his wife died, and then back to Hall’s home) theoretically could be traversed in the interval between the time Hall was driven from *76the country club and the time he placed a telephone call to his daughter, the Commonwealth sought to have the jury also speculate that Hall in fact found his wife, passed the witnesses’ house without detection, murdered his wife, and returned home. The evidence does not prove that hypothesis. Nor does the evidence disprove that, even if Hall’s wife was murdered, she was not killed by some other person who saw her stopped by the roadway or to whom she gave a ride.
Whenever the evidence leaves indifferent which of several hypotheses is true, or merely establishes only some finite probability in favor of one hypothesis, such evidence does not amount to proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sutphin v. Commonwealth, 1 Va. App. 241, 248, 337 S.E.2d 897, 900 (1985) (citation omitted).
The majority asserts that Hall admitted killing his wife. No evidence in this record supports that assertion. Indeed, the Commonwealth does not even suggest that Hall admitted killing his wife. This is purely a case based on insufficient circumstantial evidence and suspicion.
But, circumstances of suspicion, no matter how grave or strong, are not proof of guilt sufficient to support a verdict of guilty. The actual commission of the crime by the accused must be shown by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to sustain his conviction.
Clodfelter v. Commonwealth, 218 Va. 619, 623, 238 S.E.2d 820, 822 (1977) (citation omitted).
For these reasons, I would reverse the conviction and dismiss the indictment.