128 Ill. App. 3d 985 - People v. Amato’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

17 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A court’s witness, or any witness for that matter, cannot be impeached by prior inconsistent statements unless his testimony has damaged, rather than failed to support the position of the impeaching party. The reason for this is simple: No possible reason exists to impeach a witness who has not contradicted any of the impeaching party’s evidence, except to bring inadmissible hearsay to the attention of the jury. Impeachment is supposed to cancel out the witness’ testimony. It is only when the witness’ testimony is more damaging than his complete failure to testify would have been that impeachment is useful.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 222 Ill. App. 3d 546 - People v. Villegas

2. ““(a) The credibility of a witness may be attacked by any party, including the party calling him.” (87 Ill. 2d R. 238.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 161 Ill. App. 3d 714 - People v. Hastings