Patterson v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently August 2014
10 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 Harris v. State · Allen Kane's Major Dodge, Inc. v. Barnes · Eason v. State · Barnes v. State · 152 Ga. App. 792 - Farmer v. State
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he rule as to the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence to support a conviction is that the evidence [must] exclude every reasonable hypothesis except the guilt of the accused. [Cits.] While we recognize that if there is question of the sufficiency of the circumstantial evidence to support guilt, this is a matter best left to a jury [cit.], this rule does not apply where the verdict of guilty is unsupportable as a matter of law. [Cit.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“While neither the jury nor this court is required to accept these explanations, in the absence of any other valid explanation, we cannot ignore the only explanation offered. [Cit.] [I] conclude that there is no circumstantial evidence of guilt on which to base a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”
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.