Court Opinion

ID: 9740421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:35:13.804759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:18.245067
License: Public Domain

Krivosha, C.J.,
dissenting.
I regret that I must dissent in this case. While I concur completely with that portion of the majority opinion which provides that Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29-3303 (Reissue 1979) requires a showing of probable cause that a crime has been committed and that the person compelled to produce the nontestimonial evidence has committed that crime before an order requiring one to give fingerprints may issue, I cannot agree that the evidence in this case, even when considered as a whole, was sufficient to submit the case to the jury. The circumstantial evidence presented to the jury is to the effect that a glove wrapper contained a palm print of the accused; that he was overheard saying to a young boy, “It is over there”; and that he displayed a thick stack of currency while making a purchase on July 2, 1982. The palm print was on a wrapper that had been around a pair of gloves offered for sale and which the defendant had a right to touch. The fact that no one could remember that he was in the store was not sufficient, in my view, to create any inference of his having placed his palm print on the wrapper during the course of a robbery. Moreover, his pointing in a general direction and saying “It is over there” are not sufficient to connect him with the fact that certain goods from the store are later found in a shed a week after the burglary. No goods, including the gloves, were ever found in the possession of the defendant or on any *446property owned or controlled by the defendant. While it is true that one accused of a crime may be convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence if, taken as a whole, the evidence establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the State is not required to disprove every hypothesis but that of guilt, see State v. Buchanan, 210 Neb. 20, 312 N.W.2d 684 (1981), it is likewise true that to sustain a conviction for a crime the corpus delicti must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Workman, 213 Neb. 479, 329 N.W.2d 571 (1983). In order to convict one of burglary in violation of Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-507 (Reissue 1979), the State must produce evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused willfully, maliciously, and forcibly broke and entered any real estate or any improvements thereon with intent to commit any felony or with intent to steal property of any value. The State was able to establish the elements of the crime only by requiring the jury to make substantial leaps of faith from one bit of circumstantial evidence to another. In my view, it was asking more than the jury should have been asked to do, and, like our decision in State v. Workman, supra, the action should have been dismissed.
White, J., joins in this dissent.