stating, in firearms-possession prosecution, that there was "no more reason to require a permissive statutory presumption to meet a reasonable-doubt standard before it may be permitted to play any part in a trial than there is to require that degree of probative force for other relevant evidence before it may be admitted"
How later courts described this case
- stating, in firearms-possession prosecution, that there was "no more reason to require a permissive statutory presumption to meet a reasonable-doubt standard before it may be permitted to play any part in a trial than there is to require that degree of probative force for other relevant evidence before it may be admitted"
- explaining that automobile presumption is constitutionally applied where it is “rational to infer” that the occupant of a vehicle “was fully aware of the presence of the guns and had both the ability and the intent to exercise dominion and control over the weapons”
- holding that a permis sive inference instruction “affects the application of the beyond a reasonable doubt standard only if, under the facts of the case, there is no rational way the trier [of fact] could make the connection permitted by the inference”
- holding permissive presumption constitutional where there was a “ ‘rational connection’ between the basic facts that the prosecution proved and the ultimate fact presumed, and the latter is ‘more likely than not to flow from’ the former”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Thomas Lester Jones v. Arnold Jago, Sup't., 701 F.2d 45 (1983)
Since Jones’ failure to object was a substantial basis of the state appellate courts’ holding in the present case, Allen is distinguishable.
The opinion
Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I join fully in the Court’s opinion reversing the judgment under review. In the necessarily detailed step-by-step analysis of the legal issues, the central and controlling facts of a case often can become lost. The “underbrush” of finely tuned legal analysis of complex issues tends to bury the facts.
On this record, the jury could readily have reached the same result without benefit of the challenged statutory presumption ; here it reached what was rather obviously a compromise verdict. Even without relying on evidence that two people had been seen placing something in the car trunk shortly before respondents occupied it, and that a machinegun and a package of heroin were soon after found in that trunk, the jury apparently decided that it was enough to hold the passengers to knowledge of the two handguns which were in *168 such plain view that the officer could see them from outside the car. Reasonable jurors could reasonably find that what the officer could see from outside, the passengers within the car could hardly miss seeing. Courts have long held that in the practical business of deciding cases the factfinders, not unlike negotiators, are permitted the luxury of verdicts reached by compromise.