Cavender v. The State
| Decision Date | 14 November 1890 |
| Docket Number | 15,800 |
| Citation | 25 N.E. 875,126 Ind. 47 |
| Parties | Cavender v. The State |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Ripley Circuit Court.
The judgment is reversed.
E. P Ferris, A. Stockinger and C. Bagot, for appellant.
L. T Michener, Attorney General, and J. H. Gillett, for the State.
Mitchell J. Berkshire, C. J., did not participate in the decision of this case.
The appellant was convicted on a charge of burglary, and sentenced to two years imprisonment in the State's prison. The only question requiring consideration is whether or not the evidence justifies the verdict of guilty.
No useful purpose could be subserved by setting out a summary of the evidence, or by indulging in extended argument to show wherein it is insufficient to sustain the judgment of conviction. Elaborate briefs have been presented on both sides: on the one hand to show that the conviction is not sustained by any proof; on the other that it is. The concession is frankly and justly made by the learned Attorney General, that the evidence is not conclusive of the appellant's guilt; but a forcible argument is submitted to show that there are numerous circumstances in proof which coincide with guilt. It is, of course, conceded that the evidence is wholly circumstantial, there being not even a suggestion that there is any direct proof implicating the appellant. We quite agree that there is evidence which, if believed by the jury, coincides with the guilt of the accused. This, however, falls far short of fulfilling the requirements of the law in order to warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence alone. As has been well said: "While circumstantial evidence is, in its nature, capable of the highest degree of moral certainty, yet experience and authority both admonish us that it is a species of evidence in the application of which the utmost caution and vigilance should be used."
It has been the declared law of this State ever since the decision in Sumner v. State, 5 Blackf. 579, that circumstantial evidence, to be sufficient for a conviction, ought to be of a conclusive tendency; that is, its tendency ought to be not only to convince the minds of the jury of the guilt of the defendant, but to exclude every supposition inconsistent with his guilt.
The true test by which to determine the value of circumstantial evidence, in respect to its sufficiency to warrant a conviction in a criminal case, is, not whether the proof establishes circumstances which are consistent, or which coincide with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused, but whether the circumstances, satisfactorily established, are of so conclusive a character, and point so surely and unerringly to the guilt of the accused as to exclude every reasonable hypothesis of his innocence. The force of circumstantial evidence being exclusive in its character, the mere coincidence of a given number of circumstances with the hypothesis of guilt, or that they would account for, or concur with, or render probable the guilt of the accused, is not a reliable or admissible test, unless the circumstances rise to such a degree of cogency and force as, in the order of natural causes and effect, to exclude, to a moral certainty, every other hypothesis except the single one of guilt. Binns v. State, 66 Ind. 428; Stout v. State, 90 Ind. 1; Gillett Crim. Law, section 873. The proof must not only coincide with the hypothesis of guilt, but it must be inconsistent with every other rational conclusion. Moreover, where circumstances which tend to support the hypothesis of guilt are accounted for, and explained consistently with innocence it is a necessary conclusion that to the extent that the explanation assumes the...
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