Hankins v. State

Today the majority dispenses with the necessity of instructing the jury on the law of circumstantial evidence, a Texas legal tradition over a hundred years old, and yet continues the prohibition against instructing the jury on a definition of reasonable doubt, a Texas legal tradition over a hundred years old. The logic for the latter is cursorily explained in a footnote purporting to distinguish the Holland decision. Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 75 S.Ct. 127, 99 L.Ed. 150 (1954). The majority concludes in that footnote that Holland followed a local practice of giving an elaborate…