Javier Cavazos, Acting Warden v. Shirley Ree Smith (565 U.S. 1)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided October 31, 2011 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 565 U.S. 1 · 132 S. Ct. 2
- Decided
- October 31, 2011
- Term
- October Term 2011
- Vote
- 6–3
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. The opinion of the Court in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (1979), makes clear that it is the responsibility of the jury — not the court — to decide what conclusions should be drawn from evidence admitted at trial. A reviewing court may set aside the jury’s verdict on the ground of insufficient evidence only if no rational trier of fact could have agreed with the jury. What is more, a federal court may not overturn a state court decision rejecting a sufficiency of the evidence challenge simply because the federal court disagrees with the state court. The federal court instead may do so only if the state court decision was “objectively unreasonable.” Renico v. Lett, 559 U. S. 766, 773 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because rational people can sometimes disagree, the inevitable consequence of this settled law is that judges will sometimes encounter convictions that they believe to be mistaken, but that they must nonetheless uphold. The Court of Appeals in this case substituted its judgment for that of a California jury on the question whether the prosecution’s or the defense’s expert witnesses more persuasively explained the cause of a death. For this reason, certiorari is granted and the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. ⅜* ⅜ ⅜ This case concerns the death of 7-week-old Etzel Glass. On November 29,1996, Etzel’s mother, Tomeka, put Etzel…
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