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544 N.E.2d 161

Williams v. State

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided October 4, 1989

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1989-10-04

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“I received information, in October, from an informant, that an Ernest Williams, a black male, was involved in the robbery of a Village Pantry on the south-side of Indianapolis.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Newbauer v. State

“[tlestimo-ny which contains out-of-court statements by third parties but [which] is introduced primarily to explain why a particular course of action was taken”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Craig v. State

Relies on Johnston v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1989-10-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently July 2015 · most notably Mason v. Hanks (1996), Wickizer v. State (1993)

2 federal appellate · 32 state decisions

2301989199020002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

PIVARNIK, Justice,

¶1dissenting.

¶2I must respectfully dissent from the majority in its holding that the statement by Detective Hilligoss went beyond the permissible bounds of the hearsay rule and its corollary which permits testimony that contains out-of-court statements by third parties but is introduced primarily to explain why a particular course of action was taken pursuant to Johnston v. State (1988), Ind., 530 N.E.2d 1179, 1181, cited by the majority.

¶3The statement by Detective Hilligoss, "an Ernest Williams ... was involved in the robbery of a Village Pantry on the south side of Indianapolis," did nothing more than explain the subject covered by the undisclosed source that related it to the Village Pantry robbery under investigation and before us in this appeal. Obviously that would be inferred without the explanatory statement. In other words, the fact that, following receipt of this piece of intelligence, Detective Hilligoss went to Florence Crockett with a photograph of Williams, tells us and the jury that the intelligence involved Williams with the robbery. Detective Hilligoss' testimony said nothing more.

¶4I would deny transfer and allow the judgment of the trial court to stand.

¶5GIVAN, J., concurs.

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