164 W. Va. 783 - State v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently March 2017 · most notably 167 W. Va. 830 - State v. Beck (1981), 173 W. Va. 1 - State v. Young (1983)
26 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 Greene v. Massey · State v. Brown · United States v. Luna · Jones v. State · United States v. Coades
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Before a physical object connected with a crime may properly be admitted into evidence, it must be shown that the object is in substantially the same condition as when the crime was committed. Factors to be considered in making this determination are: (1) the nature of the article, (2) the circumstances surrounding its preservation and custody, and (3) the likelihood of intermeddlers tampering with it.””
7 later decisions quote this exact passage““When an object or article has passed through several hands while being analyzed or examined before being produced in court, it is not possible to establish its identity by a single witness, but if a complete chain of evidence is established, tracing the possession of the object or article to the final custodian, it may be properly introduced in evidence.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“To allow introduction of physical evidence into a criminal trial, it is not necessary that every moment from the time evidence comes into the possession of a law enforcement agency until it is introduced at trial be accounted for by every person who could conceivably come in contact with the evidence during that period, nor is it necessary that every possibility of tampering be eliminated, it is only necessary that the trial judge, in his discretion, be satisfied that the evidence presented is genuine and, in reasonable probability, has not been tampered with.”
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.