14 Wash. App. 951 - State v. Kimball’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently September 2002
14 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 United States v. Wade · Gilbert v. California · Lehnhausen v. Lake Shore Auto Parts Co. · Humble Pipe Line Co. v. Waggonner · Spokane & Inland Empire Railroad v. Campbell
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In addition, the special finding as to whether a defendant was armed with a deadly weapon adds nothing to the elements of first-degree murder and is not a special finding of fact related to the offense charged, as are special interrogatories. It has no relevancy to Kimball’s guilt of the crime for which he has been convicted, but only to punishment. We therefore do not regard the jury’s negative finding of possession of a deadly weapon as inconsistent with the general verdict.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“did not bind the jury, but presented a theory under which it could find that Kimball “possessed” a deadly weapon. [The instruction] required a conclusion based upon the law expressed in the instruction, which is contrary to a literal fact which the jury could have believed—that Kimball, in fact, did not have a deadly weapon in his possession when the killing took place. The jury was asked, in effect, to make a finding of possession in law, or constructive possession, a legal fiction, as opposed to possession in fact. The special verdict is thus an expression of the opinion of the jury upon a legal proposition, . . . and should not be allowed to control the fact found by the general verdict and be held as vitiating it.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The rule established by decisions of the Supreme Court of the State is that where the general verdict and the special findings can be harmonized by taking into consideration the entire record of the cause including the evidence and the instructions to the jury, and construing it liberally for that purpose, it is the duty of the court to harmonize them, and that where a special finding is susceptible of two constructions, one of which will support the general verdict and the other will not, that construction shall be adopted which will support the general verdict.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.