State v. Smith

HARRELL, J.,

concurring, in which BATTAGLIA, J., joins.

I concur in the Majority opinion and judgment of the Court. I write separately only to state that I would have extended its reasoning to embrace the views espoused by Judge James R. Eyler in his dissent in the Court of Special Appeals. Smith v. State, 145 Md.App. 400, 434-48 , 805 A.2d 1108, 1128-36 (2002). In particular, the following passage from Judge Eyler’s dissent resonates with me in its effort to place in proper perspective, in analyzing a sufficiency of the evidence question, the application of the abstruse 1 (to me) and often-chanted language from Wilson v. State, 319 Md. 530, 537 , 573 A.2d 831, 834 (1990) (“a conviction upon circumstantial evidence alone is not to be sustained unless the circumstances, taken together, are inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence”) (internal citations omitted):

In my view, based primarily upon Jackson [v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 , 99 S.Ct. 2781 , 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979)] and Hebron [v. State, 331 Md. 219 , 627 A.2d 1029 (1993)], the Jackson constitutional standard is the applicable standard to determine sufficiency of the evidence, and the Wilson principle has no practical vitality. First, if there is any direct evidence, the Wilson principle does not apply. In that situation, sufficiency of evidence is rarely an issue; the question is one of credibility. Second, in the case of circumstantial evidence alone, the Wilson principle applies only when there is a single strand of evidence. Even in that instance, *561 however, the principle is not helpful. Gaselaw dictates that direct and circumstantial evidence are to be treated the same. Further, all circumstances are to be considered together and not each piece separately. Finally, the State does not have to exclude all reasonable hypotheses of innocence to get to the trier of fact. Attempting to decide whether there is one strand or multiple strands of circumstantial evidence in a given case does not appear to be helpful. It is a question of the strength of the inferences to be drawn.

If the evidence is solely circumstantial, as Hebron indicates, the determination of sufficiency involves some weighing of inferences. In that situation, the strength and genuineness of inferences, in addition to credibility, have to be assessed in order to decide the ultimate issue. The court decides, in the first instance, as a generalization, whether the inference of guilt, drawn from the circumstantial evidence presented, would permit a fact-finder to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, and if so, the case is submitted to the fact-finder for that determination in the particular case before it. If the inferences are such that the fact-finder would have to speculate, the case should not go to the fact-finder.

If the inference of guilt is sufficiently strong, guilt is a fact question, even though the evidence would also support an inference of innocence. In other words, the meaningful test is whether the evidence supports a rational inference from which the trier of fact could fairly be convinced of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This test is the same whether the evidence is direct, circumstantial, or some combination of both.

Presumably because of the historical distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence, courts have been more prone to let any and all direct evidence pass the sufficiency test while attempting to formulate a rule for circumstantial evidence other than assessing the strength of the inferences presented. It may be that, at some point, the credibility of *562 direct evidence is so lacking that it cannot meet the sufficiency test.

Id. at 443-44, 805 A.2d at 1133-34 .

Judge BATTAGLIA authorizes me to state that she joins in this concurrence.

. "Abstruse — difficult to comprehend,” Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 5 (10th ed.1993); "beyond the understanding of an average mind,” Roget’s II, The New Thesaurus 6 (1995).