Taylor v. Illinois

Taylor v. Illinois
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 7, 1987 Decided January 25, 1988
Full case name	Ray Taylor v. State of Illinois
Citations	484 U.S. 400 (more) 108 S. Ct. 646; 98 L. Ed. 2d 798; 1988 U.S. LEXIS 573
Case history
Prior	Conviction affirmed, People v. Taylor, 141 Ill.App.3d 839, 491 N.E.2d 3 (1986); leave to appeal denied, unreported (Ill., 1987); cert. granted, 479 U.S. 1063 (1987).
Holding
The refusal to allow an undisclosed witness to testify after a trial has started does not violate a defendant's right to obtain favorable testimony under the Compulsory Process Clause. Illinois Appellate Court affirmed.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia
Case opinions
Majority	Stevens, joined by Rehnquist, White, O'Connor, Scalia
Dissent	Brennan, joined by Marshall, Blackmun
Dissent	Blackmun
Laws applied
Compulsory Process Clause

Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U.S. 400 (1988), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that defense witnesses can be prevented from testifying under certain circumstances, even if that hurts the defense's case.^[1] Taylor was the first case to hold that there is no absolute bar to blocking the testimony of a surprise witness, even if that is an essential witness for the defendant, a limitation of the broad right to present a defense recognized in Washington v. Texas (1967).

Taylor was the first Compulsory Process Clause case since Washington v. Texas to provide a specific limitation on the right of defendants to force their witnesses to testify. In that case, the Court construed a defendant's right very broadly in his ability to present a defense. Here, however, the Court restricted that ability to comply with court rules, especially if those rules were of equal consequence upon both the prosecution and the defense. This decision was reached over the dissent of three Justices, all of whom felt a defendant's case should not be limited based on an error solely by the defendant's attorney to list appropriate witnesses.