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Supreme Court· 1/28/1918

Greer v. United States

Citations

  • 245 U.S. 559
  • 38 S. Ct. 209
  • 62 L. Ed. 469
  • 1918 U.S. LEXIS 2106

Syllabus

<p>There is no presumption in a criminal case that the accused is of good character.</p> <p>A presumption upon a matter of fact, when it is not merely a disguise for another principle, means that common experience shows the fact t.o be so generally true that courts may notice the truth.</p> <p>The District Court in a criminal trial is not bound by the rules of evidence as they stood in 1789. Rosen v. United Stales, ante, 467.</p>

How courts have described this case

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

  • discussing the evidentiary rule that the prosecution cannot introduce character evidence until the defendant has done so
  • discussing the evidentiary rule that the prosecution cannot introduce character evidence until the - 10 - defendant has done so
  • trial court correctly refused to instruct jury that defendant was presumed to be of good character
  • trial court correctly refused to instruct jury that defendant was presumed to be of good character

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Holmes, McKenna

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

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

Cites

3 cases in this archive are cited by this case.

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Sourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).

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