Watts v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 state decisions

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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “>We are not holding that the defendant was entitled to the F.B.I. report; but we are holding that the Trial Court committed prejudicial error in ruling out all the evidence about there being such a report concerning the comparison of the defendant's hair with the hair found in the hood worn by the assailant. Such ruling by the Trial Court prevented the defendant's counsel from arguing to the Jury anything about the failure of the State to offer the most definite evidence of identity that was available in this case. * * * When the Court told the Jury to "disregard any testimony about an investigative or comparative report", the Court thereby prevented the defendant's counsel from commenting to the Jury on the failure of the State to present the evidence the State might have offered regarding identity. The defendant was entitled to have his court-appointed counsel allowed to argue to the Jury on the failure of the State to offer such evidence and the Court's ruling precluded such argument.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Arkansas State Highway Commission v. Phillips