Eley v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 75 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 78 later decisions — most recently April 2020 · most notably United States Gypsum Co. v. Mayor of Baltimore (1994), Lawson v. State (2005)
3 federal appellate · 75 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 Wilhelm v. State · Reed v. State · United States v. Garza · 29 Ill. 2d 511 - The People v. Beier · Wood v. State
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 78 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e find that permitting defense counsel to argue that the State’s unexplained failure to produce fingerprint evidence should permit the adverse inference that the evidence would have been unfavorable to the State does not present the danger of the kinds of abuses which the rule is designed to prevent. First, the comments which the defense counsel sought to make were in no way designed to appeal to the passion or prejudices of the jury. More important, they were not intended as a statement of fact or calculated to serve the purpose of evidence. Rather, the excluded comments went to the strength of the prosecution’s evidence or, more specifically, to the lack of evidence. It is the State which has the burden of producing evidence sufficient to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, (emphasis in original). Eley v. State, 288 Md. at 553 , 419 A.2d 384 .”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““... where a better method of identification may be available and the State offers no explanation whatsoever for its failure to come forward with such evidence, it is not unreasonable to allow the defendant to call attention to its failure to do so.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Our decision today must not be interpreted as an invitation to the prosecution in a criminal case to comment upon the defendant’s failure to produce evidence to refute the State’s evidence. Such comment might well amount to an impermissible reference to defendant’s failure to take the stand. Moreover even if such a comment were not held tantamount to one that defendant failed to take the stand it might in some cases be held to constitute an improper shifting of the burden of proof to the defendant.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.