Melvin Mikes v. Robert G. Borg, Warden Attorney General of the State of California

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• fingerprints alone—absent evidence that they were made “during the commission of the crime”—are insufficient evidence of guilt where the government’s case is “supported solely by evidence that the defendant’s fingerprints were found, on th[e] object” (emphasis added)
• where weapon was kept in an accessible public place, the government could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant left fingerprints on it while committing the offense
• in fingerprint only cases, prosecution must present evidence sufficient to permit the jury to conclude that the objects on which the fingerprints appear were inaccessible to the defendant prior to the time of the commission of the crime.

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).