Court Opinion

ID: 9765039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:48:45.742821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:04.137083
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
dissenting. Today the Court once again applies the so-called circumstantial evidence test to reverse a judgment entered on a jury verdict of guilty. I, for one, am now persuaded that that test should be abandoned. The addition, in cases based entirely on circumstantial evidence, of the requirement that the prosecution exclude every reasonable hypothesis consistent with innocence is, in my opinion, unwarranted, and rests, at best, on the most tenuous legal reasoning.
In a criminal prosecution, the State must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, no more, no less. By further requiring a jury to be instructed that they must exclude every reasonable hypothesis consistent with innocence, the Court inhibits the jury from intelligibly determining what, based on their collective reasoning and experience, they believe to be a reasonable doubt. I see no good reason why we need further perplex the functioning of the jury by interjecting *290this added element of uncertainty. For, as Professor Wigmore stated:
[w]hen anything more than a simple caution and a brief definition is given, the matter tends to become one of mere words, and the actual effect upon the jury, instead of being enlightenment, is likely to be rather confusion, or, at the least, a continued incomprehension. In practice, these detailed amplifications of the doctrine have usually degenerated into a mere tool for counsel who desire to entrap an unwary judge into forgetfulness of some obscure precedent, or to save a cause for a new trial by quibbling, on appeal, over the verbal propriety of a form of words uttered or declined to be uttered by the judge. The effort to perpetuate and develop these elaborate unserviceable definitions is a useless one, and serves to-day chiefly to aid the purposes of the tactician.
9 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2497, at 318-20 (3d ed. 1940).
The ostensibly higher burden of persuasion required in cases relying entirely on circumstantial evidence is based on the assumption that circumstantial evidence is less reliable and cogent than direct evidence. I find, however, that this assumption is highly questionable. There is nothing to suggest that as a general matter circumstantial evidence is not as strong as direct evidence. Indeed, a fact sworn to by a witness of questionable character is not as satisfactorily proved as a fact that is a necessary consequence of other facts sworn to by many credible witnesses. See Commonwealth v. Harman, 4 Pa. 269, 271 (1846). Yet under Vermont law the former evidence is assigned a greater probative value than the latter.
The propriety of assigning greater probative value to direct evidence than to circumstantial evidence has, over the years, been doubted and disputed by commentators and courts alike. See J. Wigmore, supra, § 26. In addressing whether a court need instruct a jury that where circumstantial evidence is involved every reasonable hypothesis consistent with innocence must be excluded, Mr. Justice Clark, speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court, stated:
*291There is some support for this type of instruction in the lower court decisions, . . . but the better rule is that where the jury is properly instructed on the standards for reasonable doubt, such an additional instruction on circumstantial evidence is confusing and incorrect ....
Circumstantial evidence in this respect is intrinsically no different from testimonial evidence. Admittedly, circumstantial evidence may in some cases point to a wholly incorrect result. Yet this is equally true of testimonial evidence. In both instances, a jury is asked to weigh the chances that the evidence correctly points to guilt against the possibility of inaccuracy or ambiguous inference. In both, the jury must use its experience with people and events in weighing the probabilities. If the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, we can require no more.
Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 139-40 (1954) (citations omitted). Not to belabor the point, but rather to point out the pervasiveness with which like instructions regarding circumstantial evidence have been criticized by some of the most eminent jurists, I quote further.
The requirement seems to us a refinement which only serves to confuse laymen into supposing that they should use circumstantial evidence otherwise than testimonial. All conclusions have implicit major premises drawn from common knowledge; the truth of testimony depends as much upon these, as do inferences from events. A jury tests a witness’s credibility by using their experience in the past as to similar utterances of persons in a like position. That is precisely the same mental process as when they infer from an object what has been its past history, or from an event what must have preceded it. All that can be asked is that the importance of the result to the accused shall demand a corresponding certainty of his guilt; and this is commonly and adequately covered by telling them that the conclusion shall be free from fair doubt. To elaborate this into an inexorable ritual, or to articulate it for different situations, is more likely to impede, than to promote, their inquiry.
*292United States v. Becker, 62 F.2d 1007, 1010 (2d Cir. 1933) (L. Hand, J.).
Had the Court weighed the evidence against this standard, I believe it would have required affirmance of the judgment. I therefore respectfully dissent.