Waller v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

51 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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “". . . if a party has a witness possessing peculiar knowledge of the transaction, and [is] supposed to be favorable to him, and fails to produce such witness when he has the means of doing so, this, in the absence of all explanation, is a ground of suspicion against him that such better informed testimony would make against him."”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jordan v. State · 365 So. 2d 108 - Holyfield v. State

2. “". . . If these defendants were operating the gas plant on the occasion in question, the facts as to the manner of its operation were in the peculiar keeping of persons who, it may be assumed, were friendly to the defendants. In these circumstances it cannot be said that the argument which the court permitted to go to the jury, if it did permit any part of it, was unfair or improper. . . . ". . . It was said by Lord Mansfield in Blatch v. Archer , Cowp. 66: "`It is certainly a maxim that all evidence is to be weighed according to the proof which it is in the power of one side to have produced and in the power of the other to have contradicted.' "Prof. Wigmore says that the propriety of the inference that the party who fails to bring before the tribunal some circumstance, document, or witness, when either he or his adversary claims that the facts would thereby be elucidated, fears to do so, and that this is some evidence that the circumstance or document or witness, if brought, would have exposed facts unfavorable to the party so failing — this inference he says is most natural. 1 Wigm. Ev. § 285.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Donaldson v. Buck

3. ““In Ethridge v. State, 124 Ala. 106 , 27 So. 320 , an indictment for arson, in which two of the five Justices dissented, it was held that overruling the defendant’s objection to the comment of the solicitor on the failure of the defendant to call his son, as a witness, was error to reverse, citing Brock v. The State, supra, and Coppin v. The State, supra [ 123 Ala. 58 , 26 So. 333 ]. In both of the cases cited the alleged witness, as before stated, was an accomplice jointly indicted with the defendant on trial, who had demanded a severance. We have been unable to locate the original record in the Ethridge case, and we assume that the son of Ethridge was also indicted for the arson, and that the rule of the Brock and Coppin cases applies. “If that is not the true status, we decline to follow that case as holding that the defendant’s son is equally available to the state in a case in which the father is on trial for a felony.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 49 Ala. App. 330 - Morgan v. State