Cite as: 532 U. S. 451 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
for its decision, the court quoted the rule that " 'it is . . . for the State to show that the crime was committed before the indictment was found, and, where it fails to do so, a conviction will be reversed.' " Id., at 777, 103 S. W., at 783 (quoting 12 Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure 382 (1904)). The court then also quoted the rule that " '[i]n murder, the death must be proven to have taken place within a year and a day from the date of the injury received.' " 118 Tenn., at 777, 103 S. W., at 783 (quoting F. Wharton, Law of Homicide § 18 (3d ed. 1907)).
While petitioner relies on this case for the proposition that the year and a day rule was firmly entrenched in the common law of Tennessee, we agree with the Supreme Court of Tennessee that the case cannot establish nearly so much. After reciting the rules just mentioned, the court in Percer went on to point out that the indictment was found on July 6, 1906; that it charged that the murder was committed sometime in May 1906; and that the only evidence of when the victim died was testimony from a witness stating that he thought the death occurred sometime in July, but specifying neither a date nor a year. From this, the court concluded that it did "not affirmatively appear" from the evidence "whether the death occurred before or after the finding of the indictment." 118 Tenn., at 777, 103 S. W., at 783. The court made no mention of the year and a day rule anywhere in its legal analysis or, for that matter, anywhere else in its opinion. Thus, whatever the import of the court's earlier quoting of the rule, it is clear that the rule did not serve as the basis for the Percer court's decision.
The next two references to the rule both were by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in cases in which the date of the victim's death was not even in issue. Sixty-seven years after Percer, the court in Cole v. State, 512 S. W. 2d 598 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1974), noted the existence of the rule in rejecting the defendants' contentions that insufficient evidence existed to support the jury's conclusion that they had caused the victim's death in a drag-racing crash. Id., at 601.
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