finding defendant denied Sixth Amendment right to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses by statutes providing that principals, accomplices, or accessories in same crime cannot be introduced as witnesses for each other, thus denying defendant right to call witness who was physically and mentally capable of testifying to events that he had personally observed and whose testimony would have been relevant and material to defense
How later courts described this case
- finding defendant denied Sixth Amendment right to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses by statutes providing that principals, accomplices, or accessories in same crime cannot be introduced as witnesses for each other, thus denying defendant right to call witness who was physically and mentally capable of testifying to events that he had personally observed and whose testimony would have been relevant and material to defense
- finding defendant was denied right to compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor where testimony of defense witness was denied because state statute made witness’s testimony inadmissible but also explaining that “[njothing in this opinion should be construed as disapproving testimonial privileges ... which are based on entirely different considerations from those underlying the common-law disqualifications for interest”
- holding that "[t]he right to offer the testimony of witnesses, and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present a defense.... Just as an accused has the right to confront the prosecution’s witnesses for the purpose of challenging their testimony, he has the right to present his own witnesses to establish a defense.”
- holding that a murder defendant’s constitutional right to present a defense was violated when he was prevented from calling as a witness a man who had been convicted of the same murder based on two evidentiary statutes preventing persons charged or convicted as participants in committing the same crime from testifying for one another
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Belton v. United States, 1994 D.C. App. LEXIS 154 (1994)
388 U.S. 14, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1967), on which appellant relies, is distinguishable because in this case, unlike
Distinguished by United States v. Turner, 274 F. Supp. 412 (1967)
The cited case of Washington v. State of Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (decided June 12, 1967), in the opinion of the Court, is distinguishable upon the facts and is not controlling of the case under consideration.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Harlan,
concurring in the result.
For reasons that I have stated in my concurring opinion in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 349 , and in my opinion concurring in the result in Pointer v. Texas, *24 380 U. S. 400, 408 , and in my dissenting opinion in Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 539-545 , I cannot accept the view that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporates,” in its terms, the specific provisions of the Bill of Rights. In my view the Due Process Clause is not reducible to “a series of isolated points,” but is rather “a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints . . . .” Poe v. Ullman, supra, at 543 ; see Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319 ; Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U. S. 213, 226 (opinion concurring in the result).
I concur in the result in this case because I believe that the State may not constitutionally forbid the petitioner, a criminal defendant, from introducing on his own behalf the important testimony of one indicted in connection with the same offense, who would not, however, be barred from testifying if called by the prosecution. Texas has put forward no justification for this type of discrimination between the prosecution and the defense in the ability to call the same person as a witness, and I can think of none.
In my opinion this is not, then, really a problem of “compulsory process” at all, although the Court’s in-corporationist approach leads it to strain this constitutional provision to reach these peculiar statutes. Neither is it a situation in which the State has determined, as a matter of valid state evidentiary law, on the basis of general experience with a particular class of persons, as for example, the mentally incompetent 1 or those previously convicted of perjury, 2 that the pursuit of *25 truth is best served by an across-the-board disqualification as witnesses of persons of that class. Compare Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 554 . This is rather a case in which the State has recognized as relevant and competent the testimony of this type of witness, but has arbitrarily barred its use by the defendant. This, I think, the Due Process Clause forbids.
On this premise I concur in the reversal of the judgment of conviction.
E. g., Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1880 , subd. 1; Cal. Pen. Code § 1321 .
E. g., Vermont Stat. Ann., Tit. 12, § 1608. See generally 2 Wigmore, Evidence § 488 (3d ed. 1940).