Evans v. State

I. INTRODUCTION

"The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge." Since the adoption of our criminal impersonation statute, Delaware practitioners and jurists assumed that the State need only prove that one gave a false name to be convicted. The Court here must, for the first time, confront that precise assumption. That examination reveals that no matter what was once believed to be in the font of common Delaware criminal law knowledge, one cannot criminally impersonate a wholly fictitious person; the State must…