Carl Dausch, Appellant v. State of Florida, Appellee

Summary

The Court held that the State presented insufficient competent substantial evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dausch was the person who murdered Mobley. Although fingerprints and DNA evidence linked Dausch to Mobley's vehicle, the evidence remained consistent with Dausch's hypothesis that he hitchhiked with the person who already possessed the vehicle. The Court reversed and vacated both convictions and sentences and remanded for entry of a judgment of acquittal. POLSTON, C.J., dissenting, would have upheld the sufficiency of the evidence but ordered a new trial based on the exclusion of evidence offered to rebut the State's consciousness-of-guilt theory.