Court Opinion

ID: 9632597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:20:08.977837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:19.535428
License: Public Domain

OAKS, Justice:
A jury convicted defendant of second degree murder of a fifteen-year-old girl who was his high school classmate. He was sentenced to five years to life, and entered upon service of his sentence. On this appeal, he urges that the evidence was insufficient to show that the crime was committed or that he committed it. The prosecution’s evidence was essentially undisputed. The parties disagree on the inferences to be drawn from it. The facts are unique.
*444On July 2, 1980, a man who was otherwise unrelated to the events of this case uncovered a human skeleton by a row of trees along a fence line in the large backyard behind his rented home in Cedar City. The skeleton was about 30 inches below the surface of the ground in an old carrot pit beneath a wooden trap door covered by a mound of earth. The police, who were notified immediately, concluded from the position of the skeleton that the body had been placed in the pit on its chest with the hips bent forward and the legs and arms folded over the back of the body. Along with the skeleton, they discovered a ring, a jacket, a sweater with a pin attached, blue jeans, female underclothing, and a pair of boxer shorts. The medical examiner concluded that the skeleton was that of a female between 14 and 17 years of age, approximately 5 feet 2 inches in height (plus or minus 2 inches). The left forearm had a thickened area indicating a healed fracture. The teeth contained no dental work. Neither the time nor the cause of death could be determined from the skeletal remains.
Phyllis Ady, age 15, was reported missing at 1:00 a.m. on December 13, 1977, just over two and one-half years before the skeleton was discovered. At that time, she was residing with her aunt and uncle, the Westmans, who lived approximately one block from where the body was found. Mrs. Westman and Betty Ady, the victim’s mother, identified the ring, jacket, sweater, and pin found with the skeleton as Phyllis’s. On the basis of that identification and their testimony that Phyllis was 15 years of age, 5 feet 4 inches in height, had no dental work, but had earlier suffered a fracture of the left forearm that had healed, the jury had ample evidence to conclude that the skeletal remains were those of Phyllis Ady.
The evidence summarized above also met the requirement of corpus delicti, which, we have said, “requires only that the' State present evidence [1] that the injury specified in the crime occurred, and [2] that such injury was caused by someone’s criminal conduct.” State v. Knoefler, Utah, 563 P.2d 175, 176 (1977). Accord: State v. Kim-bel, Utah, 620 P.2d 515, 517 (1980); State v. Cazier, Utah, 521 P.2d 554, 555 (1974). In this case, the “injury” in the first part of the definition is the death of a human being. As for the second requirement, it is unnecessary to show cause of death or to provide evidence on the specific degree of homicide. The State need only present evidence that the death resulted from criminal conduct rather than by accident or from natural causes. “The criminal agency causing death may be proved by circumstantial evidence and the reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom.” People v. Miller, 71 Cal.2d 459, 78 Cal.Rptr. 449, 459, 455 P.2d 377, 387 (1969). That was done in this case. The concealment of the skeletal remains and the unnatural position of the body provided sufficient evidence from which the jury could conclude that Phyllis Ady died from criminal activity.
This appeal turns on whether there was sufficient evidence for the jury to convict defendant of the crime of second degree murder for “intentionally or knowingly” causing the death of Phyllis Ady. In considering that question, we review the evidence and all inferences which may reasonably be drawn from it in the light most favorable to the verdict of the jury. We reverse a jury conviction for insufficient evidence only when the evidence, so viewed, is sufficiently inconclusive or inherently improbable that reasonable minds must have entertained a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime of which he was convicted. State v. Kerekes, Utah, 622 P.2d 1161, 1168 (1980); State v. Lamm, Utah, 606 P.2d 229, 231 (1980); State v. Gorlick, Utah, 605 P.2d 761, 762 (1979); State v. Daniels, Utah, 584 P.2d 880, 882-83 (1978); State v. Romero, Utah, 554 P.2d 216, 219 (1976).
In view of what is said in the dissent on this subject, we deem it desirable to emphasize that notwithstanding the presumptions in favor of the jury’s decision this Court still has the right to review the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict. The fabric of evidence against the defendant must cover the gap between the *445presumption of innocence and the proof of guilt. In fulfillment of- its duty to review the evidence and all inferences which may reasonably be drawn from it in the light most favorable to the verdict, the reviewing court will stretch the evidentiary fabric as far as it will go. But this does not mean that the court can take a speculative leap across a remaining gap in order to sustain a verdict. The evidence, stretched to its utmost limits, must be sufficient to prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. State in re Utah, 642 P.2d 386 (1982); State v. Kourbelas, Utah, 621 P.2d 1238, 1240 (1980).
Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, the evidence against the defendant was as follows. At the time Phyllis disappeared, she and defendant were both 15 years of age. They lived about a half block apart on 900 West in Cedar City, she with the Westmans and he with his mother. They attended the same school, but they apparently did not have a dating relationship. Phyllis’s aunt testified that before December 12, 1977, defendant had been to their home on only one occasion, the day before, when he merely came to the door to inquire if Phyllis was home.
As she was driven past defendant’s house at about 6:00 p.m. on December 12, Phyllis asked to be let off. Mrs. Westman observed defendant, who had been sitting on his porch, walk out to meet Phyllis in the road. Mrs. Westman never saw Phyllis again. When Phyllis had not come home at about 9:00 or 9:30 that evening, Mrs. West-man went to defendant’s home but found no one there. Sometime between 10:30 p.m. and midnight, she returned and, when defendant answered the door, asked about Phyllis’s whereabouts.1 He replied that he did not know, that she had left him and gone with a blonde long-haired fellow defendant did not know. At 1:00 a.m., Mrs. Westman reported Phyllis missing.
On the evening of December 12, before 8:00, defendant telephoned his sister .in Las Vegas. He told her that “he was getting a hassle at home and in school and he wanted to come down.” He phoned again the next morning. His sister then drove to Cedar City, picked him up about noon, and drove him back to Las Vegas. Defendant then stayed with his sister and her husband in Las Vegas for about four days.
Aside from whatever inference might be drawn from the fact that defendant was the last person seen with Phyllis before she disappeared and the fact that he left Cedar City the day after she disappeared, the only evidence of defendant’s guilt of murder in the second degree were statements he made to three family members during his visit in Las Vegas and a statement he made to a girl friend two years later. There was no other evidence of admissions, no physical evidence, and no motive for the homicide.
All of defendant’s statements to family members concerned an experience he had during his four-day visit to Las Vegas. His sister and her husband heard him screaming in the night, before midnight. Concluding that he was having a nightmare, they took him into the kitchen to talk about it. The various witnesses’ accounts of what was said are critical, and are therefore quoted here in their entirety.
Alisa Backstoce, defendant’s sister, testified as follows:
Q. Mrs. Backstoce, can you tell me in substance and effect what was said and by whom in this conversation around your kitchen table?
A. We asked Johnny what his nightmares was about. He said he was having a nightmare about walking with a girl and she slapped him and that’s all he remembered, and then waking up taking a bath and her folks, the girl’s folks pounding on the door wanting to know where she was.
Q. All right. Did he say anything else about the girl, other than just what you’ve told us?
*446A. Later he said he thought he had hurt or killed a girl, but he wasn’t sure.
In context, and by its literal terms, this testimony clearly referred to the content of Johnny’s (defendant’s) dream, although the last quoted answer might be subject to the interpretation that it referred to an actual occurrence.
The testimony of James Backstoce, which is quoted in the footnote,2 clearly refers solely to the defendant’s explanation of the dream that had awakened him. In content, it is consistent with his wife’s account.
Robert Petree, defendant’s brother, testified that he went to the home in Las Vegas during his brother’s four-day visit to tell him that the Cedar City Police were looking for him to question him about the disappearance of a young girl. Robert told his brother he was going to return him to Cedar City. The testimony continued as follows:
Q. All right. What happened, then, after that; was there anything further said?
A. Yes. Alisa told me about these nightmares that she had been woken up. I don’t remember how many times or what different nights. But she said that she had been awoken by his screaming in the night.
Q. All right. Did you have any further conversation about that with your brother?
A. Yes, sir. I asked him, you know, was there something wrong or was something bothering him.
Q. What did he tell you?
A. Well, he proceeded to tell me that he was walking through a field with — I took it as a young girl. He didn’t say what girl or who it was, but she slapped him. He blacked out. And then he goes on from there to say about the dreams.
Q. Okay, what did he tell you about the dreams?
A. Okay. The dream, that was described to me from him, and my sister both, that—
Q. What did he tell you about the dream, not what your sister told you, but what did he tell you?
A. What he told me about the dream, that when he blacked out and he started to dream that he — his words were he thought he hurt her. He thought he might have killed her.
In context, it is clear that the statements related in Robert’s testimony were entirely concerned with defendant’s dream and not with actual events.3 This was further emphasized in the cross-examination as follows:
Q. Now if I understand you correctly, you have been sitting here repeating what Mr. Petree told you about a dream he had had, is that correct?
A. Yes, sir.
The only other evidence of defendant’s guilt came in the testimony of Debra Wilson, a girl who had dated defendant in Las Vegas or California in the winter of 1980,
t *447more than two years after Phyllis disappeared. She testified that during one of their conversations defendant told her that he had gotten into a fight with a girl in Utah. He mentioned no names, dates, or other details. His statement about this event, as described in the witness’s testimony, which is quoted in full in the footnote,4 was so inconsequential to this witness that she said it “just passed through one ear and out the other.” In short, it could have referred to any of a variety of real or exaggerated events in the dating life of a teenager. There was no other evidence of guilt.
In response, the defense entered a stipulation that none of the “items” recovered from the clothing in the pit or from a nearby shed matched the hair samples taken from the defendant. A girl friend of Phyllis’s testified that when Phyllis left her at about 6:00 on the evening of December 12 she said she was on her way to meet a Ken Perkins, with whom the witness was casually acquainted as a person who lived nearby who wanted to date Phyllis.5 Other defense witnesses testified that they thought they had seen Phyllis alive at various places in the months following her disappearance. In the posture of this appeal, we must assume that the jury placed no credence in any of this testimony. On the other hand, contrary to the suggestion in the dissent, the fact that the jury did not' believe the defense implication that Perkins was a viable suspect adds little or no strength to the case against the defendant. Though the identification of another person as a probable perpetrator may help a defendant in securing an acquittal, his failure to identify another suspect provides no evidence of his guilt. A defendant must be convicted on the strength of the evidence against him, not on the weakness of the evidence against someone else. Defendant’s conviction must stand or fall on the content of and inferences that can be drawn from the prosecution’s evidence.
The verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree rests entirely on testimony of defendant’s meeting Phyllis on the street on the evening she disappeared, his trip to Las Vegas on the day following, and on three witnesses’ testimony of defendant’s statements to them in Las Vegas. Interpreted most favorably to the prosecution, those statements refer entirely or almost entirely to defendant’s descriptions of his strange dream. The testimony that he told a date two years later that he once had a fight with a girl in Utah adds nothing of substance on this issue.
While the evidence was sufficient for the jury to conclude that the death of Phyllis Ady involved criminal activity (the corpus delicti), the evidence was not sufficient to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendant caused Phyllis Ady’s death. Even if the evidence proved that defendant caused her death, it was manifestly insufficient to prove that he did so “intentionally or knowingly,” as was charged in this complaint for murder in the second degree. U.C.A., 1953, § 76-5-203(l)(a).
The conviction is reversed and the defendant is ordered discharged from custody.
STEWART and HOWE, JJ., concur.

. Neither defendant’s mother nor the man who boarded with them nor Mrs. Westman noted anything unusual about defendant’s appear-anee or demeanor when they saw him at various times between 9:00 p.m. and midnight on December 12.

. A. We all sit down at the kitchen table and discussed what had disturbed him to wake him up like that.
[Here followed several questions and m-swers about the physical surroundings wi ire the conversation took place and who was present, as well as defense counsel’s objection, denied, on admissibility. The testimony then continued as follows:]
Q. Mr. Backstoce, again, what was said and by whom at this conversation?
A. The things we were discussing with Johnny and, of course, the girl that was missing. And during the discussion—
Q. Okay, would you please tell us who said what.
A. Well, John said that he was walking the girl home and the girl slapped him and that was the last thing he remembered till he woke up taking a bath in the tub.
Contrary to the interpretation in the dissent, the first answer quoted here makes clear that the entire testimony related to the content of defendant’s dream.

. This is further authenticated by Robert Pe-tree’s unambiguous and repeated testimony to the court during a hearing out of the presence of the jury on defendant’s unsuccessful contention that the “admission” was inadmissible because the State had not proved the corpus delicti. In this hearing, Petree testified that all of the statements he had repeated from the defendant “came out of one of Johnny’s dreams.”

. Q. Again, Miss Wilson, can you tell me in substance and effect what was said and by whom in this conversation ....
A. He had told me that he had gotten in a fight with a girl in Utah. He didn’t mention any names. And he came home and he couldn’t remember nothing afterwards.
Q. All right, did he say anything else about what condition he was in when he came home?
A. Just that he remembered getting in a fight and 1 guess he had blood on his shirt; that was what was mentioned, and he couldn’t remember nothing.

. The record shows that- Perkins had resided between the lot where the skeleton was found and the McDonald’s restaurant, whose parking lot abutted that lot in the rear (along the fence line by the pit). In rebuttal, the prosecution • showed that Perkins had a record of narcotics offenses, that his place of residence had been torn down the preceding August, and that he had moved away from Cedar City prior to that time. The prosecution introduced a “mug shot” of Perkins, and the witness who had mentioned him (Phyllis’s girl friend) was unable to identify it.