State v. Singh’s Empirical Analysis
2002
Citation profile
443 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 444 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably State v. Stevenson (2004), State v. Thompson (2003)
443 state decisions — followed in 14 states
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 United States v. Young · Darden v. Wainwright · Smith v. Phillips · State v. Golding · Arizona v. Youngblood
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 444 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“require a defendant to comment on another witness' veracity ... invade the province of the jury, create the risk that the jury may conclude that, in order to acquit the defendant, it must find that the other witnesses lied, and distort the state's burden of proof.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a] prosecutor may invite the jury to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence, however, he or she may not invite sheer speculation unconnected to evidence.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“First, it is well established that “determinations of credibility are for the jury, and not for witnesses.” Consequently, questions that ask a defendant to comment on another witnesses] veracity invade the province of the jury. Moreover, “[a]s a general rule, [such] questions have no probative value and are improper and argumentative because they do nothing to assist, the jury in assessing witness credibility in its fact-finding mission and in determining the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence.” Second, questions of this sort also create the risk that the jury may conclude that, in order to acquit the defendant, it must find that the witness has lied. This risk is especially acute when the witness is a government agent in a criminal case. A witnesses] testimony, however, “can be unconvincing or wholly or partially incorrect for a number of reasons without any deliberate misrepresentation being involved[,]” such as “misrecollection, failure of recollection or other innocent reason.” Similarly, courts have long admonished prosecutors to avoid statements to the effect that if the defendant is innocent, the jury must conclude that witnesses have lied. The reason for this restriction is that “[t]his form of argument ... involves a distortion of the government’s burden of proof.” Moreover, like the problem inherent in asking a defendant to comment on the veracity of another witness, such arguments preclude the possibility that the witness’ testimony conflicts with that of the def”
2 later decisions 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.