State v. Tabor’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “You can contrast their testimony with that of the defendant’s. The defendant took the stand and under direct examination he said he had two felonies and that’s kind of it. I showed that he had a third, and he wanted to weasel around that. He didn’t remember it, thought you were talking about misdemeanors; I really don’t remember that; it wasn’t that big a deal, so I didn’t remember it. But, you know, if I didn’t have that piece of paper laid out in front of him and shown him, if I didn’t raise that up and say, “You didn’t have that,” do you think he would have admitted it? No, he wouldn’t have admitted that. He wouldn’t admit that he had a felony. I had the record for those charges. Do you think he would have told you about his 46 misdemeanors if I didn’t have the records to that, hadn’t proved on this felony failure to appear that I had that record? If I hadn’t demonstrated to him that I had records to show he was not being forthcoming with you, do you think he would have admitted it? Certainly not. He says he’s an animal lover. No. He didn’t want us to bring out the fact that in this courthouse yesterday that he was convicted of felony animal abuse. He didn’t want that to come out. Why? Because he was trying to hide it from you.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Tabor v. State

2. “Well, I remind you you’ve got to consider motivation to lie here in this matter. You’ve got to consider the motivation. What motivation did the defendant have? Well, he’s been in the Department of Corrections and doesn’t want to go back. Is that alone a reason to lie? Well, it doesn’t mean necessarily that you can’t absolutely believe what'he says without more. Is his story consistent throughout? If he had taken the stand and told you about — been upfront with you about his prior history, then perhaps you could believe him. But again, he didn’t. He got up on the stand and he lied to you about his felonies, he lied to you about his misdemeanors, he lied to you about being an animal lover. I had to keep after him about many things. You heard him; he switches testimony about matters while he was testifying under oath.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Tabor v. State

3. “There was a .22 there; I could have grabbed that. But I’m an animal lover; I didn’t want [Milholland] to really shoot the dog, but I knew whoever shot that rickety shotgun there [would] more than likely get a pretty nasty bruise on the hand or finger or something and maybe they wouldn’t want to shoot it again.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Tabor v. State