State v. Shaw’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 36 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2009 · most notably Batson v. Kentucky (1986), State v. Swift (1976)
3 federal appellate · 36 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 Swain v. State of Alabama · Harris v. New York · State v. Hamilton · State v. Fox · State v. Sneeden
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 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Members of the jury, a reasonable doubt, or at least a definition of that [sic] is acceptable by our Supreme Court, is that it is not a vain, imaginary or fanciful doubt, but rather it is one based upon sanity or saneness and rationality. And when it is said that the jury must be satisfied of the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, it means that you must be fully satisfied or entirely convinced or satisfied to a moral certainty of the truth of the charge, and after considering and comparing and weighing all the evidence, or the lack of that evidence, as the case may be, if your minds are left in such condition that you cannot say that you have abiding faith to a moral certainty of the defendant's guilt of one or more or all of those charges, then under those circumstances, you have a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, you do not. A reasonable doubt, as that term is employed in the administration of criminal law, is an honest, substantial misgiving, one generated by the insufficiency which fails to convince your judgment and conscience and satisfy your reason as to the guilt of the accused. A reasonable doubt is not a doubt suggested by the ingenuity of counsel, or by your own ingenuity not legitimately warranted by the testimony or the lack thereof; nor is it one born of a merciful inclination or disposition to permit a defendant to escape the penalty of the law; nor is it one prompted by sympathy for him or anyone connected with him.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Montgomery
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.