Sandra Lynne Downing v. Blair Losvar

How courts have described this case

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

• conviction reversed where jury may have taken an erroneous route to its guilty verdict
• evidence sufficient that passenger constructively possessed drugs found in suitcase in trunk
• police found birth certificate, beeper bill addressed to the defendant, business cards with beeper number; jury could make probable inference that the defendant, with small build, owned the small-sized clothing in a suitcase that also contained drugs
• evidence that defendant exercised control over vehicle, possessed beeper, and his birth certificate and personal papers were found in trunk near suitcase containing his clothes and cocaine was sufficient to permit inference of knowledge of cocaine
• defendant driver’s control of vehicle was of equal significance to ownership
• joint venture appropriate where participants act together toward a common end and where it is unnecessary “to decide who was a principal and who a helper — for each is guilty whether acting in one or the other role or successively in both”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).