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74 Ala. 39

Hobbs v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided December 15, 1883

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1883-12-15

Prom the Circuit Court of Limestone. Tried before the Hon. H. C. Speaks. The indictment in this casé charged the defendant, Scott Hobbs, with the larceny of a cow, the property of James Wilson.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““Every inference counsel may think arises out of the testimony” is a “legitimate subject of criticism and discussion.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Harris v. Harris

Relies on Cross v. State

Cited in Black's (1910)’s definition of “Probable”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1883-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently June 1989 · most notably Arant v. State (1936), Dyer v. State (1941)

29 state decisions

5018831890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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 →

STONE, J.

¶1— We had hoped that, in Cross v. The State, 68 Ala. 476, we expressed ourselves so clearly, as not to be misunderstood. Speaking of statements' of counsel which would be available on error, we then said: “ The ■ statement must be made as of fact/ [and] the fact stated must be unsupported by any evidence.” The language objected to in this case was manifestly uttered as an inference, and that inference we can not say was unsupported by any testimony. On the contrary, we think the inference drawn from the testimony was very reasonable and natural. We have no wish to shackle discussion, or to scrutinize, narrowly and critically, inferences counsel may draw from proven facts. Trial courts would be treading on dangerous ground, were they to exercise a severe censorship over the line of argument counsel may pursue. They must not allow them to constitute themselves unsworn witnesses, and to state, as facts, matters of which there is no testimony. But we have gone no further. • On’ the contrary, we expressly said, in Gross' case, that “ every inference counsel may think arises out of the testimony,” is a legitimate subject of criticism and discussion. See Motes v. Bates, at the present term.

¶2There is no error in the record, and the judgment of the Circuit Court must be affirmed.

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