71 So. 2d 899 - Mayo v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
107 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 107 later decisions — most recently September 2017 · most notably 559 So. 2d 187 - State v. Law (1989), 351 So. 2d 972 - McArthur v. State (1977)
107 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.
Relationships
Relies on Holton v. State · Frank v. State · 62 So. 2d 41 - Head v. State · Whetston v. State · Jenkins v. State
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 107 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"`Evidence which furnishes nothing stronger than a suspicion, even though it would tend to justify the suspicion that the defendant committed the crime, is not sufficient to sustain conviction. It is the actual exclusion of the hypothesis of innocence which clothes circumstantial evidence with the force of proof sufficient to convict. Circumstantial evidence which leaves uncertain several hypotheses, any one of which may be sound and some of which may be entirely consistent with innocence, is not adequate to sustain a verdict of guilt. Even though the circumstantial evidence is sufficient to suggest a probability of guilt, it is not thereby adequate to support a conviction if it is likewise consistent with a reasonable hypothesis of innocence.' Similarly ... we [have] held that `the circumstantial evidence test guards against basing a conviction on impermissibly stacked inferences.' Suspicions alone cannot satisfy the State's burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the expansive inferences required to justify the verdict in this case are indeed improper." [e.s., c.o.]”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“"When circumstantial evidence is relied upon to convict a person charged with a crime, the evidence must not only be consistent with the defendant's guilt but must also be inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of his innocence... . And evidence which leaves one with `nothing stronger than a suspicion' that the defendant committed the crime is not sufficient to sustain a conviction... . "Circumstantial evidence is never sufficient to support a conviction, where, after there is assumed all to be proved which the evidence tends to prove, another hypothesis still may be true, because it is the actual exclusion of each other hypothesis which clothes mere circumstances with the force of proof. Thus evidence leaving uncertain which of several hypothesis may be true, or establishing only a probability favoring one hypothesis rather than another, cannot be equal to proof of guilt, no matter how strong the probability may be. * * * * * * "... The evidence in the record and the lawful inferences which may be drawn from it are wholly insufficient to sustain the judgment appealed from."”
5 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Anjima v. State · Jones v. State“[i]n the absence of other evidence legally sufficient to contradict the defendant's explanation, his version cannot be ignored.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.