Colyer, Wilkie Schell Jr.

How courts have described this case

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

• recognizing that the trial court is free to discredit post-trial testimony even when it is wholly uncontroverted
• holding that “an ‘outside influence’ is problematic only if it has the effect of improperly affecting a juror’s verdict in a particular manner—for or against a particular party”
• recognizing that, in 1983, Supreme Court of Texas adopted “Texas Rule of Civil Evidence 606(b), which, 15 except for two narrow exceptions, prohibits post-verdict juror testimony to impeach a verdict” (internal footnote omitted)
• explaining that trial court makes credibility determinations and is tasked with resolving conflicts in evidence
• explaining that the trial judge can disbelieve uncontroverted but patently biased evidence, as in the case of an alibi provided by the defendant’s mother
• holding that a telephone call from a juror’s physician that the juror’s daughter was sick did not qualify as an “outside influence” for the purposes of Rule 606(b) despite the fact that it did indeed originate from a source outside the jury room

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).