Rock v. Arkansas (1986)
- Docket
- 86-130
- Decided
- 1986-01-01
Summary
Question: Does Arkansas’s blanket ban on all hypnotically refreshed testimony infringe on Vickie Rock’s Fourteenth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment right to testify on her own behalf? Conclusion: Yes. Justice Harry A. Blackmun delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority. The Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Compulsory Process Clause of the Sixth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment protect the right of the individual to testify on one’s own behalf at a criminal trial. Because the Arkansas rule was a blanket ban, it did not allow a trial court to consider the particular circumstances of individual cases. Although Arkansas has a state interest in preventing unreliable testimony from being admitted into evidence at trial, that interest does not justify a blanket ban on testimony that may be reliable in an individual case. Therefore the exclusion of the hypnotically refreshed testimony, without exploring the reliability of the testimony, infringed on the petitioner’s Constitutional right to testify in her own defense. In his dissent, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that an individual’s right to present evidence has always been subject to reasonable restrictions. Because Arkansas’s rule excluding evidence obtained by hypnosis is a reasonable attempt to ensure the reliability of evidence, he argued that it was appropriate to defer to the judgment of the Supreme Court of Arkansas. Justice Byron R. White, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Antonin Scalia joined in the dissent.