State v. Friend’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 14 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““That evidence of other crimes has probative force is without question. It affects the judgment of the average juror, and of the trained legal mind of the lawyer and of the judge accustomed to scrutinize and weigh evidence. This prompts the remark of Judge Jones that ‘other acts of criminality or immorality are not legally relevant, and should not be dragged in to prejudice the defendant or to create a probability of guilt.’ 1 Jones, Ev. § 143. And it induces Dean Wigmore to remark upon the tendency of the trial tribunal, whether judge or jury, ‘to take the proof of it as justifying a condemnation irrespective of guilt of the present charge,’ and ‘to believe the defendant guilty of the charge merely because he is a likely person to do such acts,’ and ‘to condemn, not because he is believed guilty of the present charge, but because he has escaped unpunished from other offenses.’ 1 Wigmore, Ev. § 194. The rule is stated by Mr. Justice Dodge in Paulson v. State, 118 Wis. 89, 94 N. W. 771 , to be that under the theory of criminal trials ‘that evidence against him [the accused] should be confined to the very offense charged, and that neither general bad character nor commission of other specific disconnected acts, whether criminal or merely meretricious, could be proved against him.’ This is the present settled rule of evidence in criminal trials in this state and in other common law jurisdictions.””

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