76 Or. App. 301 - State v. Mills’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 state decisions

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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"[W]e believe it is a perversion of an Oregon constitutional right to turn a shield (the right to keep the state from using illegally obtained evidence) into a sword (the right to take affirmative advantage of the unavailability of that evidence to work a fraud on the trier of fact). One of the functions of the exclusionary rule is to preserve the integrity of our judicial system by refusing admission to evidence that was obtained in violation of the document that created the judicial system — the constitution. But a court system that countenances perjury also loses its integrity — there can be no respect for law when a court is not even free to insist that witnesses appearing before it obey the oath they take to tell the truth. The proper balance of these twin challenges to the integrity of our judicial system is, we think, to permit a defendant to keep illegally obtained evidence from a jury unless he takes the stand — something he cannot be compelled to do — and, by his testimony, makes that evidence pertinent to determining whether he is telling the truth. This is a very limited rule: The evidence against defendant is not made generally admissible if he testifies; it is admissible only and to the extent it impeaches a statement he had made under oath at trial. He is still free to testify as to other matters, and many defendants may choose to do so. But he is not free to take the oath with his fingers crossed. "A defendant's right to testify does not exist in a vacuum inde”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Isom