State v. Maes’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 state decisions

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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The line between permissible inference and impermissible speculation is not always easy to discern. When we ‘infer,’ we derive a conclusion from proven facts because such considerations as experience, or history, or science have demonstrated that there is a likely correlation between those facts and the conclusion. If that correlation is sufficiently compelling, the inference is ‘reasonable.’ But if the correlation between the facts and the conclusion is slight, or if a different conclusion is more closely correlated with the facts than the chosen conclusion, the inference is less reasonable. At some point, the link between the facts and the conclusion becomes so tenuous that we call it ‘speculation.’ When that point is reached is, frankly, a matter of judgment.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Garcia

2. “[B]ecause the power to define crimes is committed to the Legislature, and because penal statutes are to be strictly construed, we must exercise caution in employing the judicially created legal fiction of constructive possession to criminalize conduct that the Legislature has not clearly proscribed.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Nevarez