Goforth v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

39 state decisions

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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The question as to why the defendant left the community and remained away from it becomes a question for the jury, and so, when ihe state offers the fact of the defendant’s flight from the community in evidence, the law allows both the state and the defendant to show all those things which the defendant said and did when he left, and while away from the community, which tend to explain the quo animo of the flight, whether the absence of the defendant was due to his sense of guilt, or his desire to avoid, or through fear of, arrest, or on the other hand, whether his absence-was due to other causes.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 18 Ala. App. 665 - Harroway v. State · Webster v. State

2. ““Of course a defendant, in such a case, cannot get before a court or jury his declaration that he is not guilty of the crime, or any other mere self-serving declaration tending to show that he had no connection with the commission of the corpus delicti, but he may show, as evidence tending to rebut the idea that his absence was in fact a ‘fleeing from justice,’ such acts and declarations of his while absent which may tend to show that his absence from the community was due to an entirely different cause.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 18 Ala. App. 665 - Harroway v. State