Smith v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We find nothing in . . . [these cases] which would require reversal here. We do not have a defendant who has lost a defense or been subjected to a trial in which “less evidence” in any direct sense is required for conviction than would have been required at the time of the offense . . .Nor are we persuaded by U.S. v. Henson, supra, for in that case, the law deemed ex post facto required the introduction against a testifying accused of certain facts which might not have been introduced had the law extant at the time of the offense been applied. That is not the case before us now. Rather, we are faced with the question whether admission of certain evidence of clearly admissible facts violated the ex post facto prohibition. While we could not condone legislation criminalizing an act after its perpetration or retroactively increasing the punishment, we can find no reason to hold that a person who commits a crime has a right to rely on rules of evidence in effect at the time of the crime which govern not the facts which may be proven but the manner in which those facts are ascertained by a witness.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Cogburn v. State