20 N.C. App. 352 - State v. Harrell’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently May 2011
10 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 State v. Williams
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The motive which prompts a person to do a particular act is seldom an essential element of a cause of action or defense, and therefore it need not ordinarily be proved. The existence of a motive is, however, a circumstance tending to make it more probable that the person in question did the act, hence evidence of motive is always admissible where the doing of the act is in dispute. The point arises most often in prosecutions for homicide, arson and other crimes, but is occasionally presented in civil cases as well. Motive may be proved by declarations and other conduct of the person himself, or by evidence of facts which would naturally give rise to a relevant motive and from which such a motive may therefore reasonably be inferred.”
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.