Mckinney v. Rees

How courts have described this case

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

• concluding that use of character evidence to show propensity may violate due process
• finding that evidence of knife possession at the time of the murder was relevant to determining which of two suspects was the killer when the knife in question could have been the murder weapon
• explaining the rule precluding prior bad act evidence has \persisted since at least 1684 to the present\
• finding no relevance or permissible non-propensity purpose, in young man’s trial for mother’s murder, of nearly 60 pages of transcript testimony describing defendant’s apparent “fascination with knives and with a commando lifestyle”
• Bad character evidence can violate due process only if there are no non-propensity inferences that the jury may draw from the evidence.
• Br echt/Kotteakos harmless error standard applied to. due process claim concerning propensity evidence

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).