178 W. Va. 47 - State v. Welker’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently July 2000
15 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 Lustig v. United States · 128 W. Va. 299 - Yuncke v. Welker · United States v. Aboumoussallem · United States v. Robinson · 169 W. Va. 456 - State v. Gwinn
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Circumstantial evidence will not support a guilty verdict, unless the fact of guilt is proved to the exclusion of every reasonable hypothesis of innocence; and circumstances which create only a suspicion of guilt but do not prove the actual commission of the crime charged, are not sufficient to sustain a conviction.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Rule 404 is an attempt to codify the common law rules on the admission of character evidence, and we therefore look to the common law for guidance.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In a criminal case, the admissibility of testimony implicating another person as having committed a crime hinges on a determination of whether the testimony tends to directly link such person to the crime, or whether it is instead purely speculative. Consequently, where the testimony is merely that another person had a motive or opportunity or prior record of criminal behavior, the inference is too slight to be probative, and the evidence is therefore inadmissible. Where, on the other hand, the testimony provides a direct link to someone other than the defendant, its exclusion constitutes reversible error.”
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.