Commonwealth v. Stockhammer

How courts have described this case

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

• finding that evidence of whether complainant’s parents knew of her sexual activity prior to the rape was relevant to the defendant’s theory that she fabricated the charges to prevent her father from learning the truth about her consensual sexual relationship
• the complainant witness’s credibility was of critical importance, since she was the sole witness on the central issue of consent to sexual intercourse
• improperly precluded testimony “amounted to a separate and discrete basis of impeachment of the complainant’s credibility”
• evidence of the complainant’s fear of her parent’s reaction to her sexual activity, which constituted a motive to lie, was improperly excluded
• statutory privilege must yield to defendant’s right to use privileged communications in his defense
• proffered evidence had a tendency to prove bias and motivation to lie

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).