State v. Bell’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently April 1997 · most notably State v. Whistnant (1980), State v. Collins (1993)
48 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 State v. Overman · State v. Riera · State v. Brown · State v. Cox · State v. Perry
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When a defendant is indicted for a criminal offense, he may be convicted of the charged offense or a lesser included offense when the greater offense charged in the bill of indictment contains all of the essential elements of the lesser, all of which could be proved by proof of the allegations in the indictment. Further, when there is some evidence supporting a lesser included offense, a defendant is entitled to a charge thereon even when there is no specific prayer for such instruction, and error in failing to do so will not be cured by a verdict finding a defendant guilty of a higher degree of the same crime.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage“The general rule of practice is, that when it is permissible under the indictment, as here, to convict the defendant of “a less degree of the same crime,” and there is evidence to support the milder verdict, the defendant is entitled to have the different views arising on the evidence presented to the jury under proper instructions, and an error in this respect is not cured by a verdict finding the defendant guilty of a higher degree of the same crime, for in such case, it cannot be known whether the jury would have convicted of the lesser degree if the different views, arising on the evidence, had been correctly presented in the court’s charge.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The evidence in the case and the inferences to be reasonably drawn therefrom were not such as would have required the jury to find that defendant entered the Julia Higgins Cottage by a burglarious breaking. Conversely the jury might reasonably have inferred that defendant made his entry without a burglarious breaking. Under these circumstances, defendant was entitled ‘. . . to have different views arising on the evidence presented to the jury upon proper instructions. . . .’ State v. Childress, [ 228 N.C. 208 , 45 S.E. 2d 42 ],”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Whitaker
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.