Stogsdill v. State

Kenneth Stogsdill (defendant) was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Billy Price, whose mutilated body was found near his own scattered belongings. The prosecution's case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence: testimony about Stogsdill's past violent threats of similar mutilation, similarity between his truck's tire tracks and those at the scene, and similarity between hair found in his truck and Price's hair -- but the prosecution never definitively established the tracks or hair actually matched, and offered no direct evidence placing Stogsdill with Price, with his belongings, or at the crime scene. Stogsdill appealed his conviction as insufficiently supported.