Hall v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 9 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The statute therefore authorizes no other mode of proving a witness unworthy of credit because of his presumed insensibility to the obligations of an oath, as evidenced by his commission of an infamous crime, but the record of his conviction, because his conviction can be proved only by the record, and we think the strictness of the rule is founded in the soundest reasons of justice and of policy. If the question of the witness’ guilt or innocence of crime in fact, were permitted to be tried, issues would often be so greatly multiplied that the merits of the principal cause on trial would be lost sight of, and the rights of the litigating parties sacrificed. And it would also be doing great injustice to the witness to subject him to trial for crime in a case to which he was not a party. The common law therefore determined wisely when it excluded all evidence of the criminality of a witness except the record of his conviction. And we think the court ought not to depart from this wise and salutary rule any further than the plain import of the statute requires. The statute is an enabling or remedial one, and should be construed liberally in favor of the party for whose benefit it was made. It speaks only of persons who have been convicted of, not of those who have committed, crimes, and it provides that such conviction, not such commission, may be shown to affect the credit of the witness.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Williams v. United States