Watson v. State’s Empirical Analysis
2001
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 169 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 175 later decisions — most recently August 2019 · most notably 2 Cal. 3d 619 - Keeler v. Superior Court (1970), State v. Wolery (1976)
6 federal appellate · 169 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 Jones v. State · Edwards v. State · Hayette v. State · Anello v. State · Purviance 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 175 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The reason for the rule requiring the testimony of an accomplice to be corroborated is that it is the testimony of a person admittedly contaminated with guilt, who admits his participation in the crime for which he particularly blames the defendant, and it should be regarded with great suspicion and caution, because otherwise the life or liberty of an innocent person might be taken away by a witness who makes the accusation either to gratify his malice or to shield himself from punishment, or in the hope of receiving clemency by turning State's evidence.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'[t]o be an accomplice a person must participate in the commission of the crime ... with common criminal intent with the principal offender, or must in some way advocate or encourage the commission of the crime.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"`This distinguishing of the accessory before the fact from the principal is a pure technicality. It has no existence either in natural reason or the ordinary doctrines of the law. For in natural reason the procurer of a crime is not chargeable differently from the doer; and a familiar rule of the common law is that what one does through another's agency is regarded as done by himself.... Likewise in morals, there are circumstances wherein we attach more blame to the accessory before the fact than to his principal; ....'" (Quoting 1 J. Bishop, Criminal Law § 673, at 486-87 (9th ed. 1923)).”
2 later decisions 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.