Westbrook v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1947
Citation profile
68 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 70 later decisions — most recently November 2017 · most notably 460 So. 2d 778 - May v. State (1984), 481 So. 2d 203 - Fisher v. State (1985)
68 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 Barnes v. State · Weathersby v. State · Cook v. State
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 70 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is fundamental that convictions of crime cannot be sustained on proof which amounts to no more than a possibility or even when it amounts to a probability, but it must rise to that height which will exclude every reasonable doubt; that when in any essential respect the state relies on circumstantial evidence, it must be such as to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis than that the contention of the state is true, and that throughout the burden of proof is on the state. It is our duty here to maintain these principles.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It has been firmly established by a long line of decisions in this state, of which Weathersby v. State, 165 Miss. 207 , 147 So. 481 , is typical, that where the defendant is the only surviving witness to a homicide his version of what occurred must, if reasonable, be accepted as true unless substantially contradicted in material particulars by the physical facts or by the facts of common knowledge, and that it is not enough to contradict that version in mere matters of detail which do not go to the controlling substance.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“must have been so completely conclusive as to have excluded every other reasonable hypothesis * * *.”
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.