Campbell v. State

Decided October 25, 1993

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1993-10-25

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“In light of the strong constitutional bias in favor of permitting such personal testimony of the accused and the available remedy of continuance, the exclusion of a defendant's own alibi testimony is an unjustified and overbroad intrusion upon the right of the accused to testify on his own behalf. Today, we expressly hold that the exclusion of a defendant's own testimony of alibi under the alibi statute, .C. § 35-86-4-1, is an impermissible infringement upon the right of the accused to testify guaranteed by Article I, § 18 of the Indiana Constitution.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Preston v. State

Relies on Baxter v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1993-10-25

How this case has been cited

Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently August 2015

24 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.

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SHEPARD, Chief Justice,

¶1concurring.

¶2While I join today’s majority opinion, I write separately to emphasize that our pri- or decision in Baxter v. State (1988), Ind., 522 N.E.2d 362, decided only the constitutionality of prohibiting testimony by a defendant under the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Thus, while Baxteris still stare deci-sis as to the federal issues resolved there, it does not drive today's decision concerning the Indiana Bill of Rights.

¶3I also note that we hold today only with “the exclusion of a defendant’s own alibi testimony.” Opin. at 499. The task of balancing the interests involved in a fair trial might well be different when the question concerns exclusion of evidence other than the defendant’s own testimony.

¶4Finally, I want to commend Deputy Attorney General Geoff Davis on the high caliber of the brief he submitted on behalf of Attorney General Pamela Carter.