# Michelson v. United States

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 14, 1949 · 335 U.S. 469

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9420247

## Case

- **Full name:** Michelson v. United States
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 14, 1949
- **Citations:** 335 U.S. 469; 69 S. Ct. 213; 93 L. Ed. 2d 168; 1948 U.S. LEXIS 2792
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Frankfurter
- **Judges:** Jackson, Frankfurter, Rutledge, Murphy
- **Cited by:** 1,537 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9420247

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that character evidence is generally inadmissible not because it “is irrelevant; on the contrary, it is said to weigh too much with the jury and to so overpersuade them as to prejudge one with a bad general record and deny him a fair opportunity to defend against a …
- explaining that “[c]ourts that follow the common‐law tradition almost unanimously have come to disallow resort by the prosecution to any kind of evidence of a defendant’s evil character to establish a probability of his guilt”
- explaining that character evidence “is said to weigh too much with the jury and to so overpersuade them as to prejudice one with a bad general record and deny him a fair opportunity to defend against a particular charge”
- explaining that propensity evidence is excluded because it might “overpersuade” a jury and cause them to “prejudge one with a bad general record”
- noting that “[o]nly a conviction [] may be inquired about to undermine the trustworthiness of a witness”

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring.
Despite the fact that my feelings run in the general direction of the views expressed by Mr. Justice Rutledge in his dissent, I join the Court’s opinion. I do so because I believe it to be unprofitable, on balance, for appellate courts to formulate rigid rules for the exclusion of evidence in courts of law that outside them would not be regarded as clearly irrelevant in the determination of issues. For well-understood reasons this Court’s occasional ventures in formulating such rules hardly encourage confidence in denying to the federal trial courts a power of control over the allowable scope of cross-examination possessed by trial judges in practically all State courts. After all, such uniformity of rule in the conduct of trials is the crystallization of experience even when due allowance is made for the force of imitation. To reject such an impressive body of experience would imply a more dependable wisdom in a matter of this sort than I can claim.
To leave the District Courts of the United States the discretion given to them by this decision presupposes a *488 high standard of professional competence, good sense, fairness and courage on the part of the federal district judges. If the United States District Courts are not manned by judges of such qualities, appellate review, no matter how stringent, can do very little to make up for the lack of them.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9420247. Public record. Not legal advice.