Smith v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently February 1999 · most notably State v. Putnam (1965), State v. Wycoff (1966)
30 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 Maher v. State · Sedlacek v. State · Cowan v. State · Jahnke v. State · Sall 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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The fact that an accomplice has been guilty of wilful false swearing on a material matter is a circumstance that may possibly, in a particular instance and situation, make his testimony unworthy of belief on its face, if it lacks corroboration. If such testimony appears on its face to be baldly perjurious or preposterous, and there is no independent evidence upon which a conviction can rest, the trial court should not hesitate to direct a verdict of acquittal. It is not every case, however, that requires this degree of protection. In the ordinary case, even though the accomplice may have been guilty of a conscious falsehood on a material matter, and even though his testimony is lacking in corroboration, it may not be utterly unworthy of belief on its face, and in such a situation the rights of an accused will be adequately protected if the jury are instructed that the testimony of an accomplice should be scrutinized closely for possible motives for falsification, and that where he has wilfully sworn falsely in regard to a material matter they should be hesitant to convict upon his testimony, without corroboration, and that in no case should they convict unless they are satisfied from the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, of the guilt of the accused.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Smith
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.