MA · rules
Mass. G. Evid. § 605
Competency of judge as witness
Section 605
The presiding judge may not testify as a witness at the trial.
History
Note This section states the first sentence of Fed. R. Evid. 605 and Proposed Mass. R. Evid. 605. While there are no Massachusetts statutes or cases on point, the proposition appears so clear as to be beyond question. See generally Supreme Judicial Court Rule 3:09, Canon 3(E) (judicial disqualification); Glenn v. Aiken, 409 Mass. 699, 703 (1991) (“calling a judge as a witness to opine on what ruling he might have made on a particular hypothesis” is disfavored). Cf. Guardianship of Pollard, 54 Mass. App. Ct. 318, 322–323 (2002) (judge who served as guardian ad litem prior to becoming judge not disqualified from testifying in guardianship proceeding before a different judge and from being cross-examined on her guardian ad litem report).
Provenance
- Source
- www.mass.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-17
- Edition
- 2026-09-16
- Content hash
b6e4296144e2adb8d82af0aeeab050e950ffbf40f21f315125f0be7ea9e16780
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.