State v. Burt’s Empirical Analysis
1903
Citation profile
6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently July 1977
6 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 Bassett v. United States · People v. Langtree · State v. Armstrong · Lord v. State · Owens 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““With reference to this statute the husband’s crimes might be classified thus: (1) Those which are against persons other than his wife; (2) those which are against no particular person; and (3) those which are against his wife. It is only in actions for crimes belonging to the last-mentioned class that the wife can testify for or against her husband without his consent. Had the defendant, in the case at bar, been a widower when the acts were done for which he is being punished, his crime would have been the same. The existence of the marital relation between the witness and the defendant did not, in any legal sense, affect or constitute any element of the crime for which he was convicted. Should we hold that the crime charged in this action was one against the wife it would logically follow that the rape or murder of defendant’s daughter would have been a crime against her within the meaning of the statute. To hold that a wife may testify for or against her husband, without his consent, in cases of incest, would be, in effect, to establish the rule that either husband or wife may testify for or against the other, without consent, in all actions wherein either is defendant; and such was manifestly not the legislative intent. With the policy of this statutory rule the courts are not concerned. If the law should be changed the duty of changing it devolves upon the Legislature, not upon this court. As all the wife’s testimony should have been excluded because she was not a compet”
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.