State v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
67 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 67 later decisions — most recently December 2018 · most notably State v. McKenna (1976), State v. Willis (1992)
67 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 Barker v. Wingo · Carroll v. United States · Chimel v. California · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Adams v. Williams
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 67 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““During the examination of James Thomas, the district attorney questioned him with reference to a paper writing marked State’s Exhibit 10 which purportedly was a statement made by Thomas to a police officer in November 1973. This statement apparently consisted of responses to the identical questions which were being asked at trial regard-ingthe involvement of defendants in the crimes charged in this case. Defendants objected to the interrogation of Thomas concerning his previous written statement and, with the jury absent, argued that such examination was tantamount to the State’s impeachment of its own witness. In overruling the objections the court replied that the statement previously made by Thomas was ‘no more impeaching than the leading questions that he has been permitted to ask.’ That is precisely the point defendants now urge, and we think the point is well taken. The district attorney’s ‘leading questions’ were calculated not only to impeach his own witness but also to prove the contents and the truth of the prior inconsistent testimony of the witness at the first trial. The obvious effect of these questions was to demonstrate to the jury that a written record existed which corroborated verbatim the ‘testimony’ contained in the district attorney’s questions. The anti-impeachment rule makes Exhibit 10 imcompetent as evidence, and the district attorney’s questions which indirectly but unmistakably placed it before the jury were prejudicial. Such interrogation of the w”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“In the instant case there can be no doubt that, sometime prior to calling the witness Thomas, the district attorney had substantial reason to believe that Thomas would repudiate or disavow his prior testimony if called upon to testify. This being so, the prosecutor could not have been genuinely surprised or taken unawares by the testimony of Thomas. To the contrary, he had every reason to believe that Thomas would retract his previous testimony or feign a loss of memory. Under these circumstances, the district attorney should have marked Thomas off the list of the State’s witnesses.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Cope““Where the prosecuting attorney knows at the time the witness is called that he has retracted or disavowed his statement, or has reason to believe that he will do so if called upon to testify, he will not be permitted to impeach the witness. He must first show that he has been genuinely ‘surprised or taken unawares’ by testimony which differed in material respects from the witness’s prior statements, which he had no reason to assume the witness would repudiate.” (Citations omitted.)”
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.