Richardson v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

25 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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Evidence merely that the victim has or had a romantic relationship with another man does not reflect on her character for sexual behavior. Therefore, so long as [the defendant] confined his questioning to the non-sexual nature of the victim’s former relationships, the statute would not be a basis for curtailing his cross-examination of her. [[Image here]] The proposed inquiry was confined to the existence of a relationship with an ex-boyfriend and whether the desire to reestablish that relationship was a motive to make a false claim of rape. “The possibility that [the proposed questions] may have been construed as implicating past sexual conduct could have been eliminated with a corrective instruction to the jury.” Therefore, the trial court ... erred in relying upon the rape-shield law to preclude [the defendant] from cross-examining the victim in this regard.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. People v. Golden

2. “Courts of last resort must frequently construe the language of a statute, but such courts may not substitute by judicial interpretation language of their own for the clear, unambiguous language of the statute, so as to change the meaning.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 343 Ga. App. 49 - Monumedia II, LLC v. Georgia Department of Transportation