State v. Hart

The defendant stresses his exceptions to the disallowance of his counsel’s cross-examination of the State’s witnesses Willie Lockamy and Floyd Suitt, Jr., as to their having brought civil actions against him based on the identical acts involved in this criminal prosecution.

Truth does not come to all witnesses in naked simplicity. It is likely to come to the biased or interested witness as the image of a rod comes to the beholder through the water, bent and distorted by his bias or interest. The law is mindful of this plain psychological principle when it fashions rules of evidence to aid…