Smith v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently December 1998
10 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 Hogue v. State · Edmonds v. State · Hamilton v. State · Jones v. State · Elder 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The defendant was convicted on circumstantial evidence, but there is no difference in the effect between circumstantial evidence and direct evidence. In either case it is a question for the jury to determine, and, if the jury believes from the circumstances introduced in evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant is guilty, it is the duty of the jury to find him guilty just as it would be if the evidence was direct. There is no greater degree of certainty in proof required where the evidence is circumstantial than where it is direct, for in either case the jury must be convinced of the guilt of the defendant beyong a reasonable doubt. They are bound by their oaths to render a verdict upon all the evidence, and the law makes no distinction between direct evidence of a fact and evidence of circumstances from which the existance of the fact may be inferred. Nichols’ Applied Evidence, vol. 2, § 4, 1065; Underhill’s Criminal Evidence, pages 14 and 16.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Cook v. State“Courts and Judges must always see that every person receives a fair and impartial trial before a fair and impartial jury. The Courts are the last bulwark of freedom and justice.”
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.