State v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently July 2018
21 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 In the Matter of Samuel Winship · United States v. Radio Television News Directors Ass'n · Bethlehem Steel Corp. v. Pemberton · Riverbend Farms, Inc. v. Agricultural Labor Relations Board · Kugler v. Helfant
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Proof of the identity of a substance by circumstantial evidence, including lay testimony by a person sufficiently familiar with the drug in question, may be sufficient to sustain a criminal conviction resulting from a drug prosecution, so long as this evidence establishes the identity of the drug beyond a reasonable doubt.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Nash · State v. Lesac“[s]ome of the factors to be considered in determining whether the State has met its burden of proving the identity of a controlled substance beyond a reasonable doubt include: (1) the privacy or secretiveness of the transaction, (2) references made to the drug by the defendant and others, (3) testimony by witnesses who have a significant amount of experience with the drug in question, (4) high price paid for the substance, (5) behavior characteristic of sale and use of a particular substance, (6) prior involvement by the defendant in drug trafficking, (7) corroborating testimony by officers or other experts as to the identification of the substance or the expected effects of the substance, and (8) sensory identification of the substance if the substance is sufficiently unique.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Nash“the necessity of significant past experience with the drug in question before a positive identification can be made.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Goodroad
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.