John W. Wilbur Co. v. Slater

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 traditional view is “that evidence of poverty is not admissible to show motive, because it is of slight probative value and would be unfairly prejudicial to poor people charged with crimes”
• concluding that evidence of the defendant’s financial condition “produced a high danger of unfair prejudice” because it “portrayed him as a feckless man who did not support his wife and children” (internal quotation marks omitted)
• finding that the trial court erred in admitting evidence concerning the defendant’s financial status because the evidence did not show more than the mere fact that the defendant was poor
• evidence showed that defendant in Feldman was being “squeezed,” not just that he would be better off with more money
• not appropriate to admit evidence that did not show \more than the mere fact that the defendant is poor\
• because drug addiction establishes likelihood of desperate need for money “and lack of self-control,” evidence that a person is poor and drug-addicted may be relevant to show motive to commit a crime

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).