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90 Fla. 75

105 So 140

Asher v. State

Supreme Court of Florida

Decided June 26, 1925

Supreme Court of Florida · decided 1925-06-26

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“in effect a moral certainty that the accused and no one else committed the offense”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 62 So. 2d 41 - Head v. State

Relies on Platt v. State · Davis v. State · Pate v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1925-06-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently June 1968

16 state decisions

7019251930194019501960decided

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 →

Per Curiam.

¶1 The plaintiff in error was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to capital punishment. Writ of error was taken. The evidence as to the guilt of the accused is entirely circumstantial.

¶2 Where circumstantial evidence is relied upon by the State for conviction in a criminal prosecution, the circumstances *76 taken together must be of a conclusive nature and tendency leading on the whole to a satisfactory conclusion and pro-during in effect a moral certainty that the accused and no one else committed the offense, before a verdict of guilty is justified. It is not sufficient that the facts create only a strong probability of guilt. Pate v. State, 72 Fla. 97, 72 South. Rep. 517.

¶3 In a conviction for capital punishment where the evidence as to the identity of the accused is not satisfactory, a new trial should be granted. Platt v. State, 65 Fla. 253, 61 South. Rep. 502; Davis v. State, 76 Fla. 179, 79 South. Rep. 450.

¶4 Beversed for new trial.

West, C. J., and Whitfield, Terrell and Strum, J. J., concur.
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