In recent years there has been a spate of cases assessing the sufficiency of the evidence in murder prosecutions where the State’s case is built on circumstantial evidence. A recent decision by the court of appeals in State v. Carver should make prosecutors happy while frustrating the defense. The majority described the facts of Carver as follows. The victim was found dead near her car on the shore of the Catawba River. The defendant and his cousin were fishing nearby. The victim had been strangled with a ribbon from a gift bag in her car, the drawstring of her sweatshirt, and a bungee cord similar to one in her trunk. DNA samples from the car matched to the defendant and his cousin. When the defendant was confronted with this evidence, he denied, as he repeatedly had done before, ever seeing or touching the victim or her car. Despite his statements that he had never seen the victim, the defendant told officers that the victim was a “little thing” and demonstrated her height relative to his own. After a jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder, he appealed arguing that there was insufficient evidence that he perpetrated the murder. A divided panel of the court of appeals disagreed and upheld the conviction. The majority found persuasive State v. Miller, 289 N.C. 1 (1975), a case it characterized as holding that “the existence of physical evidence establishing a defendant’s presence at the crime scene, combined with the defendant’s statement that he was [...]
Faculty Coordinators
