State v. Gowan’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably State v. Derbyshire (2009), State v. Clyde Hayden Sr. (2008)
31 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 Michelson v. United States · State v. Anderson · State v. Harris · State v. Austad · State v. MacKinnon
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We conclude that although a defendant can open the door with statements made during either direct or cross-examination, and a defense witness can open the door on direct-examination, a defense witness cannot inadvertently open the door on cross-examination. Under [Montana Rule of Evidence 404(a)(1) ], only the accused can 'open the door' for the prosecution to introduce rebuttal character evidence.”
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.