Gears v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1932
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 62 later decisions — most recently July 1982 · most notably Nester v. State (1959), Ruetz v. State (1978)
2 federal appellate · 60 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 People v. . Molineux · 119 Ohio St. 285 - Whiteman v. State · Zimmerman v. State · Frazier v. State · Robinson 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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Appellant makes the point that ‘circumstantial evidence, to sustain a conviction must exclude every reasonable hypothesis of the innocence of the accused/ That is a correct statement of a rule for the guidance of the trial court, and is simply another form of the rule that the jury must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of a defendant. For if, after considering all the evidence, a juror’s mind entertains reasonably a hypothesis of innocence, it cannot be said that his mind is convinced of the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Mandich v. State““By arbitrarily breaking up the evidence into separate bits,' and by insisting that the mental processes of the jurors, as applied to these bits of evidence, must meet an excessively refined analytical test, we might conclude that there are theoretical gaps in the evidence. It is necessary, however, that we leave to the sound judgment of the jury some margin for logical grouping of facts for the purpose of drawing inferences of fact, and for the utilization of these inferences of fact with other facts as the basis of further inferences of fact,””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Mandich v. State““ ‘If the language used by Judge Mitchell in the Cavender case was intended to convey the impression that where there are two reasonable hypotheses arising from circumstantial evidence, one of which is innocence and the other guilt, that it is the duty of a court of review to draw the inference of innocence, then this language must be disapproved. If it is meant to be a pronouncement of the law which should govern juries and trial courts, then it is approved.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Mandich v. State
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.