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Supreme Court· 1/4/1892

Boyd v. United States

Citations

  • 142 U.S. 450
  • 12 S. Ct. 292
  • 35 L. Ed. 1077
  • 1892 U.S. LEXIS 1983

Syllabus

<p>The full and unconditional pardon of a person convicted of larceny and sentenced to imprisonment therefor completely restores his competency as a witness,, although it may be stated in the pardon that it was given for that purpose.</p> <p>On the trial of a person -indicted for murder, it appeared in evidence that the killing followed an attempt to rob. . The court admitted, under objections, evidence tending to show that the prisoner had committed other robberies in that neighborhood, on different days, shortly before the time when the killing took place, and exceptions were taken. Held, that the evidence was inadmissible for any purpose.</p>

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

  • finding that admission of prior crimes committed by defendants so prejudiced their trial as to require reversal
  • finding that admission of prior crimes committed by defendants so prejudiced their trial as to require reversal
  • finding that admission of prior crimes committed by defendants so prejudiced their trial as to require reversal
  • reversing conviction on the ground that the jury convicted defendants on the basis of evidence relating to the commission of prior crimes and not on the basis of competent evidence of the specific crimes charged
  • although defendants failed to object to jury charge, defendants objected to introduction of certain evidence, and that exception was not waived by failure to object to charge
  • “However depraved in character, and however full of crime 11 their past lives may have been, the defendants were entitled to be tried upon competent evidence, and only for the offense charged.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Harlan

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

185 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

2 cases in this archive are cited by this case.

Other cases with this name

Sourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).

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