Court Opinion

ID: 9416251
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 19:34:56.695044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:23.219442
License: Public Domain

M'Kean, Chief Justice.
Two objections have been taken to the competency of Joseph Heister, as a witness on the present indictment:—1st. Because his name appears to be subscribed to the note, which his evidence is intended to prove a forgery; and 2d. Because he is interested.
The first objection has been well, and sufficiently, answered, by the remark, that whether the name of the witness is really subscribed to the note, or not, is the fact in controversy, which the Jury must decide. If the signature was allowed to be his, the objection would then, undoubtedly, be fatal.
On the second objection, I do not think, that the witness is so interested, as to render him incompetent. The verdict in the present case could not be received in evidence upon the trial of a civil action; nor would the Court permit the counsel to refer to it. I confess, however, that early in life, I entertained a different opinion on this point, conceiving then, that the weight of the adjudged cases was adverse to the competency of the witness, though I thought it hard that the law should be so. My *241opinion has been changed by the modern authorities, which give an evident preponderance to the opposite scale ; and, in general, the Judges have, of late, been inclined to a more liberal admission of testimony, applying exceptions rather to the credit, than to the competency, of a witness. In the existing state of commercial transactions, indeed, when Promissory Notes, Bills of Exchange, Bank Checks, and other instruments, not authenticated by any subscribing witness, are daily circulated to an incalculable amount, every principle of policy must enforce the necessity of allowing the person, whose name is forged, to give evidence of the fact.
But, independent of these considerations, we find the law has been established by the repeated decisions of the Courts of Pennsylvania, as well before, as since, the Revolution; and, particularly, in a late case of Respublica v. Wright (which may be added to those cases that were cited at the bar) determined by my brother Yeates and myself at Nisi Prius in the county of Bucks.
I am, therefore, of opinion that the witness ought to be sworn.