State v. Senn’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

15 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is essential to the admissibility of the admissions or confessions of a party charged with crime that they should be free and voluntary. Now, when a person, though not at the time charged, or even suspected, of the crime, is summoned before a coroner’s inquest and compelled to testify (for the law does compel persons so summoned to testify), I do not see how such testimony can be regarded as such a free and voluntary statement as would justify receiving it in evidence, when the person so testifying is afterwards charged with the crime. It is true, that, when examined as a witness, he may decline to make any statement tending to criminate himself, but the moment he does so he at once excites suspicion of his guilt; or he may not know at the time what effect his testimony may afterwards have. It seems to me, therefore, that the only way to preserve in its integrity the well settled rule, that a person cannot be required to furnish testimony against himself, is to hold that, if examined before a coroner’s jury or a committing magistrate, the testimony which he is then required to give cannot be used against him in a prosecution subsequently brought against him.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Tapp