Bester v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently February 2017
16 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 Potera v. City of Brookhaven · Hood 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An instruction which is on the weight of the evidence or which singles out and gives undue prominence to certain portions of the evidence is erroneous. Potera v. City of Brookhaven, 95 Miss. 774 , 49 So. 617 ; Hood v. State, 170 Miss. 530 , 155 So. 679 . In the case of Hood v. State, supra, [ 170 Miss. 530 , 155 So. 679 (1934)] the Court said: `It is an established rule in this jurisdiction that although an instruction is correct as a legal proposition, it shall not single out for prominent presentation to the jury certain portions of the testimony, and, by thus drawing the special attention of the jury thereto, given an undue emphasis to the portions so specifically mentioned, unless the portions so singled out are so completely sufficient within themselves that the ultimate issue may be determined solely upon them, if found to be true.' The said instruction was particularly prejudicial to the appellant in giving undue emphasis and prominence to the sheriff's testimony as to the conclusions to be drawn from the physical facts. The vital issue in the case was whether the deceased did or did not have the crowbar at the time of the fatal difficulty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Appellant, on this appeal, presents two assignments of error. He contends, first, that the court erred in permitting the sheriff to testify over appellant's objections that his investigation based on information derived from talking to the people showed that the deceased did not have a crowbar at the time of the difficulty or at any time. This testimony of the sheriff was, of course, based on hearsay and was clearly incompetent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[a]n instruction which is on the weight of the evidence or which singles out and gives undue prominence to certain portions of the evidence is erroneous.”
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.