Wesson v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1948
Citation profile
54 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently May 1994 · most notably Shadle v. State (1967), Garrett v. State (1958)
54 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 Crain v. United States · Ex Parte State · Gaines v. State · Price v. United States · Cain v. Skillin
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Every constituent of murder was averred in the indictment under consideration and 'it is sufficient, if the substance of the charge be proved, without regard to the precise instrument used. Though the indictment charges a particular weapon, the averment is substantially proved, if it be shown that some other instrument was employed, which occasions a wound of the same kind as the instrument charged, and the same consequences naturally follow.' Hull v. State , 79 Ala. 32 , 33."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“"It would be dealing in abstruse legal metaphysics, amounting almost to an absurdity, to hold that one guilty of a crime, such as indicated in the opinion of the Court of Appeals, should go free because the State was unable to prove that life was extinct before the deceased was stomped or because the State was unable to establish that the beating with the fists or the stomping with feet, one or the other or both, was the cause of death. The essence of the charge was proven when either of the means, substantially similar in nature, was shown to have produced the result."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““So-called belief charges have been denounced as erroneous in civil cases because the jury’s verdict in such cases must be reached after becoming ‘reasonably satisfied’ from the evidence. Cain v. Skillin, 219 Ala. 228, 233 (9), 121 So. 521 , 64 A.L.R. 1022 , and cases cited. “However, the proper hypothesis for a requested charge in a criminal prosecution is rested on belief from the evidence. Bush v. State, 211 Ala. 1 , 100 So. 312 .””
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.