State v. Larkin’s Empirical Analysis
1876
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions — most recently October 1995 · most notably Goodwin v. State (1883), People v. Amaya (1901)
1 federal appellate · 37 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Johnson v. State · Pierce v. State · People v. Romero · People v. Murphy · People v. Yslas
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“.“This instruction is not confined to- any particular witness. It was, as we think, intended to mislead the jury, and was properly refused. It tells the jury, in effect, that want of chastity is sufficient to destroy the credibility of a witness. As a general proposition, to be. applied indiscriminately to all cases, this is not true. A witness may be unchaste, and yet be truthful. A. witness may be chaste, and yet be untruthful. The law affords ample remedies for testing the credibility of witnesses without introducing testimony of specific acts of-immorality, and in particular instances allows greater latitude than in others, owing to the special facts and circumstances that surround each ifidividual case. There are, perhaps, exceptional cases where it might be proper to show the utter depravity of the moral character of a witness in order to establish the fact that such a witness is not entitled to any credit. But we are not dealing with the exceptions. The general rule, as recognized by a majority of the decided cases, is that evidence of bad character for chastity, where such character is collaterally, not directly, in issue, is not admissible for the purpose of impeaching the credibility of a witness.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Holton v. Davis““The jury may, and it is their duty to, take into consideration the chastity or want of chastity of any witness for the state in determining the credibility due such witness.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Holton v. Davis
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.