finding that expert blood spatter lestimony that blood on certain clothing was consistent with wearer of clothing being person who stabbed victim was proper expert testimony, while subsequent testimony that, based upon expert witness's expertise, person who wore bloody clothing was not ""a passive observer of [the] stabbing" had gone too far and was inappropriate
How later courts described this case
- finding that expert blood spatter lestimony that blood on certain clothing was consistent with wearer of clothing being person who stabbed victim was proper expert testimony, while subsequent testimony that, based upon expert witness's expertise, person who wore bloody clothing was not ""a passive observer of [the] stabbing" had gone too far and was inappropriate
- presuming that the jury found evidence sufficient to support both malice and felony murder where defendant was charged alternatively with malice and felony murder and there were no separate verdict forms for each type of murder
- determining evidence sufficient where there was evidence of defensive wounds on victim, living room in disarray, and witness testimony of hearing loud banging
- pictures depicting nature, extent and location of wounds, including defensive wounds, held relevant
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
LUMPKIN, Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the Court’s decision in this case and again urge the Court to adopt a unified “Spuehler-type” approach to evaluating both direct and circumstantial evidence. See White v. State, 900 P.2d 982, 993-95 (Okl.Cr. 1995) (Lumpkin, J., Specially Concurring). The parsing of the standard of review is no longer supported in the law. Id. And, when both standards are utilized to evaluate different parts of the evidence presented in the same trial, as in the present case, the parsing appears somewhat whimsical. The Court should seek to resolve this unsupported dichotomy. I compliment my colleague for an excellent, well-reasoned opinion.