Lewis v. State

• Decision Date: 14 February 2001
• Docket Number: No. 4D99-4166.,4D99-4166.
• Citation: 777 So.2d 456
• Parties: Travis LEWIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

777 So.2d 456

Travis LEWIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 4D99-4166.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

February 14, 2001.

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Marcy K. Allen, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Gary K. Milligan, Assistant Attorney General, Fort Lauderdale, for appellee.

WARNER, C.J.

Appellant challenges his convictions for burglary of a dwelling and grand theft on the ground that the sole evidence of his participation was his fingerprints on a cash container found in the residence. He claims that this was insufficient circumstantial evidence that he committed the crime. Because the state offered evidence inconsistent with appellant's theory that his fingerprints could have been placed there at some time other than the time of the burglary, we affirm.

The victims testified that they left for work one morning, and when they returned that evening, they noticed a television missing in the living room, and several other items were missing from their home where they had lived for two or three years. In their bedroom, they found a Tupperware container, usually on top of the dresser, on the floor. The change and money rolls they kept in the container were gone. The victims had been keeping their change in the Tupperware container on top of the dresser for over a year. Thus, someone had removed the Tupperware container from its place to take the money. They did not know appellant and had not given him permission to be in their house.

The police were able to lift a lot of fingerprints from the Tupperware container. Some of them were of no value because they were mere smudges. However, three were of value, and all three were identified as being appellant's prints. A fingerprint examiner testified that although fingerprints can last indefinitely on an object unless cleaned, if an item is handled a number of times, then prints would be overlayed by other prints and could not be identified. The prints identified as appellant's, found on the container, did not have any overlays on them.

Fingerprints are circumstantial evidence that a defendant committed a crime. See Jaramillo v. State, 417 So.2d 257, 257 (Fla.1982). We recently addressed the analysis required in circumstantial evidence cases in Griggs v. State, 753 So.2d 117, 119 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999):

In State v. Law, 559 So.2d 187, 188 (Fla.1989), the supreme court held that:

[w]here the only proof of guilt is circumstantial, no matter how strongly the evidence may suggest guilt, a conviction cannot be sustained unless the evidence is inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence. The question of whether the evidence fails to exclude all reasonable hypotheses of innocence is for the jury to determine, and where there is substantial, competent evidence to support the jury verdict, we will not reverse.

(Citations omitted). The court went on to discuss the process of analysis in such a case:

[T]he state is not required to "rebut conclusively every possible variation" of events which could be inferred from the evidence, but only to introduce competent evidence which is inconsistent with the defendant's theory of events. See Toole v. State, 472 So.2d 1174, 1176 (Fla.1985). Once that threshold burden is met, it becomes the jury's duty to determine whether the evidence is sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Id. at 189 (citation omitted). In Barwick v. State, 660 So.2d 685, 695 (Fla. 1995), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1097, 116 S.Ct. 823, 133 L.Ed.2d 766 (1996), the court reiterated that the state's burden was only to offer evidence inconsistent with the defendant's theory of innocence: "[T]he State need not conclusively rebut every possible variation of events which could be inferred from [the defendant's] hypothesis of innocence. Whether the evidence fails to exclude all reasonable hypotheses of innocence is for the jury to decide." (emphasis in original) (citations omitted). See also Arroyo v. State, 705 So.2d 54, 56 (Fla. 4th DCA 1997).

Thus, the state's evidence need only be inconsistent with the defendant's reasonable hypothesis of innocence, and it does not have to...