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559 So. 2d 114

Docket No. 89-K-2496.

State v. Davis

STATE of Louisiana v. Eugene DAVIS.

Supreme Court of Louisiana

Decided April 6, 1990.

Supreme Court of Louisiana · decided 1990-04-06

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“determination of whether the jury reasonably rejected the defendant's hypothesis of innocence and whether any alternative hypothesis of innocence is sufficiently reasonable that no rational factfinder, if properly instructed on the principles of circumstantial evidence, could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 562 So. 2d 1173 - State v. Davis

“There is a presumption of regularity in judicial proceedings.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 738 So. 2d 556 - State v. Carlos

Relies on Pope v. Illinois · 448 So. 2d 676 - State v. Captville

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1990-04-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently May 2017

14 state decisions

90199020002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1PER CURIAM.

¶2Granted. There is a presumption of regularity in judicial proceedings. R.S. 15:432; C.E. Torcia, Wharton's Criminal Procedure, § 641 (12th Ed., 1976). In the absence of any articulable basis for concluding that the trial court may have failed to comply with its duty imposed by La.C.Cr.P. art. 804 to instruct the jurors on the defendant's presumption of innocence and the state's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the unavailable portions of the charge should not bar harmless error analysis in this case. The trial court's instruction on circumstantial evidence may have been ambiguous and potentially misleading at one point, but it did not preclude the jury from considering whether the defendant's hypothesis of innocence was a reasonable one and whether a reasonable doubt existed as to his guilt. This case is therefore remanded to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal for determination of whether the jury reasonably rejected the defendant's hypothesis of innocence and whether any alternate hypothesis of innocence is sufficiently reasonable that no rational factfinder, if properly instructed on the principles of circumstantial evidence, could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497, 107 S.Ct. 1918, 95 L.Ed.2d 439 (1987); State v. Captville, 448 So.2d 676 (La.1984). If the court of appeal determines that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, the court should treat defendant's remaining assignments of error.

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