172 W. Va. 131 - State v. Bennett’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently June 2008
16 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 163 W. Va. 40 - State v. Burton · 167 W. Va. 830 - State v. Beck · 160 W. Va. 497 - State v. McAboy · 162 W. Va. 244 - State v. Kennedy · 132 W. Va. 322 - State v. Simon
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“This Court has permitted prosecutorial statements that did not specifically refer to the defendant's failure to testify. See State v. Clark, 170 W.Va. 224 , 292 S.E.2d 643 (1982); State v. McClure, 163 W.Va. 33 , 253 S.E.2d 555 (1979); State v. Simon, 132 W.Va. 322 , 52 S.E.2d 725 (1949). However, those cases involved isolated remarks that certain evidence was uncontradicted, unlike the argument here which repeatedly emphasized the absence of refutation by the defense. Further, the prosecutor's statements that no one had denied that appellant sold the drugs amounted to an impermissible comment on the appellant's failure to testify, since appellant was the only one who could have denied it.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.