305 A2D 320 - Holden v. State

How this case has been cited

Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently October 2009 · most notably Hughes v. State (1981), Riley v. State (1985)

1 district · 31 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

¶1UPON PETITIONS FOR REARGUMENT

¶2Both the State and the defendant Holden refer, upon petition for reargument, to the new circumstantial evidence rule approved by this Court in Henry v. State, Del.Supr., 298 A.2d 327 (1972). The State contends that we ignored the Henryrule in testing the sufficiency of the evidence against Brown and Griffin. The defendant Holden contends that we have failed to establish the standard to be applied in testing the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence, under the Henryrule, for submission of a case to the jury or for upholding a conviction.

¶3Assuming, arguendo, the applicability of the Henryrule, which post-dated the trial of the instant case, we take the occasion to formulate the test for the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence under Henry.

¶4For purposes of sufficiency, circumstantial evidence is to be viewed in the same light as direct evidence. The test to be applied is whether the evidence, viewed in its entirety and including all reasonable inferences, is sufficient to enable a jury to find that the State’s charge has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Mayberry, 52 N.J. 413, 245 A.2d 481, 493 (1968). See, generally, 30 Am.Jur.2d “Evidence”, § 1125.

¶5 *323Applying either that test, or the earlier “no-other-reasonable-hypothesis” test, we are satisfied that the circumstantial evidence in this case was insufficient to support the conviction of Brown and Griffin and sufficient to support the conviction of Holden.

¶6All other grounds of the petitions for reargument have been duly considered.

¶7Reargument denied.