Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court· 12/16/1966

Commonwealth v. DelValle

Citations

221 N.E.2d 922
351 Mass. 489
1966 Mass. LEXIS 679

How courts have described this case

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

evidence of threats held immaterial as demonstrative “only [of] a state of fear on the part of the deceased,” and therefore inadmissible hearsay
testimony of threats made by defendant against victim inadmissible to rebut suicidal state of mind where introduced in State’s case-in-chief and there was no evidence from the defense of victim’s suicidal tendencies
“The broad rule on hearsay evidence interdicts the admission of a statement made out of court which is offered to prove the truth of what it asserted”
“These limitations are necessary to preserve the hearsay rule; without them statements of past events could be used as evidence of the occurrence of the events merely by a process of circuitous reasoning and the rule would be absorbed by the exception”
threats made by defendant recounted by decedent

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Wilkins, Spalding, Cutter, Spiegel, Reardon

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Cited by

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

Cites

17 cases in this archive are cited by this case.

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