People v. Weaver

In People v. Weaver, 92 Ill. 2d 545, 563, 442 N.E.2d 255, 65 Ill. Dec. 944 (1982), our supreme court concisely explained the necessity and rationale for allowing impeachment by prior inconsistent statements only under very narrow circumstances: "A court's witness, or any witness for that matter, cannot be impeached by prior inconsistent statements unless his testimony has damaged, rather than failed to support the position of the impeaching party. The reason for this is simple: No possible reason exists to impeach a witness who has not contradicted any of the impeaching party's evidence, except to bring inadmissible hearsay to the attention of the jury. Impeachment is supposed to cancel out the witness' testimony. It is only when the witness' testimony is more damaging than his complete failure to testify would have been that impeachment is useful.