Labbe v. Berman’s Empirical Analysis
621 F.2d 26 · 1980
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 1 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently January 2013
6 federal appellate · 1 district · 5 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 Douglas v. Alabama · Trammel v. United States · United States v. Mandujano · Namet v. United States · California v. Arizona
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"An accused has no federal constitutional right to bar a spouse from testifying at his trial, see Trammel v. United States , 445 U.S. 40 , 100 S.Ct. 906 , 63 L.Ed.2d 186 (1980), and no constitutional right of petitioner's was violated by the mode in which his spouse asserted her privilege not to testify at petitioner's trial. While federal courts in cases decided when an accused had a privilege to preclude his spouse from testifying have stated that an opportunity should be afforded for the spousal privilege to be claimed in the absence of a jury, Melton v. United States , 398 F.2d 321 , 322 (10th Cir. 1968); Tallo v. United States , 344 F.2d 467 , 469 (1st Cir. 1965); San Fratello v. United States , 343 F.2d 711 (5th Cir. 1965), and this apparently is the Massachusetts rule, Commonwealth v. Labbe , 373 N.E.2d at 232; Commonwealth v. Stokes , 374 Mass. 583 , 374 N.E.2d 87 , 96 n. 9, we do not see that this procedure is constitutionally mandated. To be sure, there are situations where a prosecutor's questioning of a witness knowing the witness will decline to answer and will assert a privilege may be improper. This may be so when the prosecutor 'makes a conscious and flagrant attempt to build its case out of inferences arising from [the] use of the testimonial privilege' or where the 'inferences from a witness' refusal to answer [add] critical weight to the prosecution's case in a form not subject to cross-examination, and thus unfairly [prejudice] the defendant.' Namet v. Uni”
2 later decisions 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.