Commonwealth v. Lyden

Decided November 15, 1873

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1873-11-15

<p>Tile extent to which a witness may be cross-examined upon otherwise immaterial facts, for the purpose of showing his bias or of testing his credibility, is ordinarily a matter of discretion to the exercise of which no exception lies.</p>

Relies on Miller v. Smith

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1873-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently November 1926

12 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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By the Court.

¶1The extent to which a witness may be cross-examined as to facts otherwise immaterial, for the purpose of testing his bias and credibility, is ordinarily within the discretion of the judge presiding at the trial. Commonwealth v. Shaw, 4 Cush. 593. Odiorne v. Bacon, 6 Cush. 185. Miller v. Smith, 112 Mass. 470. No exception lies to the refusal of the presiding judge to permit the questions proposed in each of these cases to be put, without first producing a copy of the record.

¶2 Exceptions overruled.