Mercer v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1965
Citation profile
72 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 72 later decisions — most recently January 2014 · most notably JOHNSON, ETC. v. State (1965), Hagans v. State (1989)
72 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 Kucharczyk v. State · Bean v. State · Farrow v. State · Braxton v. State · Putnam 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 72 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Sergeant Salter was the only officer produced by the State who testified as to the voluntariness of the appellant’s admissions. Sergeant Salter testified that the appellant’s statements were given at the police station some two and one-half hours after the appellant had been brought there and that while he, the Sergeant, was in the room with the appellant, no one touched him. The Sergeant testified, however, that he was not in the room with him the entire time and that he had left prior to the alleged beating. When he returned to take the statement he did not observe any bruises or marks upon the.appellant and he said the appellant did not make any complaint to him that he had been hit or mistreated by anyone. Detectives Montgomery and Clements were not called to the stand. “We have repeatedly held that the burden is upon the State to show that a confession offered in evidence is a voluntary act of the accused and not a product of force or threats. Combs v. State, 237 Md. 428 . Bean v. State, 234 Md. 432 , 199 A. 2d 773 (1964); Abbott v. State, 231 Md. 462, 465 , 190 A. 2d 797 (1963); Jackson v. State, 209 Md. 390, 394-95 , 121 A. 2d 242 (1956). The testimony of the appellant that he was physically mistreated by the two detectives was uncontradicted by either of the persons named. The fact that Sergeant Salter testified he did not observe any marks upon the appellant and that the appellant made no complaint to him when the Sergeant returned to the room is not of itself suffi”
1 later decision 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.