Heddings v. Steele’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 46 later decisions — most recently May 2018 · most notably Commonwealth v. Smith (1996), 415 Pa. Super. 480 - Havasy v. Resnick (1992)
46 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.
Relationships
Relies on Universal Camera Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board · Granza v. United States · Commonwealth Ex Rel. Robinson v. Robinson · Commonwealth v. Anderson · 94 Wis. 2d 450 - Muller v. State
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 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he rule against hearsay is a rule of exclusion, i.e., hearsay is generally not admissible. This is so because a hearsay statement lacks guarantees of trustworthiness fundamental to the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence. Perhaps such a statement’s most telling deficiency is it cannot be tested by cross-examination. According to Dean Wigmore, cross-examination is “beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.” 5 Wigmore, supra, § 1367. Nor is the declarant under oath when the out of court statement is uttered. This court has long recognized the oath requirement as a further assurance of reliability, [citations omitted].”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The primary object of a trial in our American courts is to bring to the tribunal, which is passing on the dispute involved, those persons who know of their own knowledge the facts to which they testify. If it were not for this absolute sine qua non, trials could be conducted on paper without the presence of a single flesh and blood witness. However, with such a pen-and-ink procedure, there would be no opportunity to check on testimonial defects such as fallacious memory, limited observation, purposeful distortions, and outright fabrication. The great engine of cross-examination would lie unused while error and perjury would travel untrammeledly to an unreliable and often-tainted judgment. Accordingly, nothing is more adamantly established in our trial procedure than that no one may testify to what somebody else told him. He may only relate what is within the sphere of his own memory brought to him by the couriers of his own senses.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“an object of hatred, ridicule, or disgrace.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.