State v. Speights’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently January 2006
16 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 Furman v. Georgia · United States v. Jackson · State v. Littlejohn · State v. Harper · State v. McCrary
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The corpus delicti in a homicide case must be established by the best proof obtainable, but direct and positive evidence is not essential and such may be proved by presumptive or circumstantial evidence when that is the best obtainable. In determining whether there was sufficient proof of the corpus delicti, we, of course, are not concerned with the weight of the evidence or the credibility of the witnesses, but rather with whether there was sufficient evidence to go to the jury tending to prove the corpus delicti beyond a reasonable doubt.”
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.