Gilbert v. State

In yet another of the legion of subsidiary issues spinning off from Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 95 S. Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975), and Evans v. State, 28 Md. App. 640, 349 A. 2d 300 (1975), affirmed State v. Evans, 278 Md. 197, 362 A. 2d 629 (1976), we are in this appeal required to come to grips with the problem of how the State proves a negative element and with the inevitably attendant issue of the legal sufficiency of the evidence in that regard. In effect, we are asking, “How big a legal prize does a defendant win when he succeeds in ‘bursting the bubble’ of a Thayer-Wigmore…