Rock v. Arkansas (483 U.S. 44)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 22, 1987 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 483 U.S. 44 · 107 S. Ct. 2704
- Decided
- June 22, 1987
- Term
- October Term 1986
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Blackmun
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the Court. The issue presented in this case is whether Arkansas’ evidentiary rule prohibiting the admission of hypnotically refreshed testimony violated petitioner’s constitutional right to testify on her own behalf as a defendant in a criminal case. I Petitioner Vickie Lorene Rock was charged with manslaughter in the death of her husband, Frank Rock, on July 2, 1983. A dispute had been simmering about Frank’s wish to move from the couple’s small apartment adjacent to Vickie’s beauty parlor to a trailer she owned outside town. That night a fight erupted when Frank refused to let petitioner eat some pizza and prevented her from leaving the apartment to get something else to eat. App. 98, 103-104. When police arrived on the scene they found Frank on the floor with a bullet wound in his chest. Petitioner urged the officers to help her husband, Tr. 230, and cried to a sergeant who took her in charge, “please save him” and “don’t let him die.” Id., at 268. The police removed her from the building because she was upset and because she interfered with their investigation by her repeated attempts to use the telephone to call her husband’s parents. Id., at 263-264, 267-268. According to the testimony of one of the investigating officers, petitioner told him that “she stood up to leave the room and [her husband] grabbed her by the throat and…
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