dying declaration
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 290 U.S. 96 - Shepard v. United States · 1933Most cited · 912 citing opinions
To make out a dying declaration, the declarant must have spoken without hope of recovery and in the shadow of impending death. There must be 'a settled hopeless expectation' that death is near at hand, and what is said must have been spoken in the hush of its impending presence. The patient must have spoken with the consciousness of a swift and certain doom.
How often courts cite the case defining “dying declaration”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “dying declaration” — 912 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.