Earnhart v. State

This circumstantial evidence case was tainted with its trait of weakness from the moment Deputy Sheriffs Don Teague and Troy Adams independently and for different reasons surmised that the Earnhart brothers were culpable.

Teague said that the Earnharts became suspects when “they told me that no one else had been there;” for his part, Adams said they became suspects when it appeared, from the lack of blood in his pickup truck and all the blood inside the house that Elkins had not been hurt before he got to the house. Acting on their respective suspicions the deputies observed the body of the…