Court Opinion

ID: 9619474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:28:27.259662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:09.565427
License: Public Domain

ON DENÍAL OF PETITION FOR REHEARING
BURNETT, Judge.
Gibson asserts that our principal opinion contains a factual error. He contends that he asked the hay seller to “tell it like it is” after the conference with the attorney, rather than before the conference. However, Gibson cites no particular passage in the trial transcript to support this contention. We have carefully reviewed the transcript. We find that it does not contradict the sequence of events related in our opinion.
Moreover, even if the remark had been made after the conference, it remained the jury’s task to weigh the remark and to decide what inference, if any, should be drawn from it. The jury permissibly could have inferred that Gibson’s remark was made not to discontinue the prior solicitation of perjury but simply to encourage the hay seller to testify according to a belief, expressed in the attorney’s office, that he had not been “shorted.” Upon such an inference, Gibson’s remark would not have constituted a retraction of the offer to pay for false testimony if the hay seller concluded — as he ultimately did — that in fact he had been “shorted.”
Gibson also urges that our opinion “strains” to uphold the jury’s verdict. However, this argument misapprehends the standard of appellate review. Our function is not to decide anew whether Gibson is guilty or not guilty. It is to determine whether the verdict is supported by substantial evidence, even though the evidence may be conflicting or may give rise to varying inferences. As noted in our principal opinion, jurors are permitted to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence; and we are constrained to view the record favorably to the state, on appeal from a judgment of conviction.
We have examined the other points raised in the petition for rehearing, finding them to be unpersuasive. Therefore, the petition for rehearing is denied.
WALTERS, C.J., and SWANSTROM, J., concur.