State v. Harbison’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
42 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently September 2003 · most notably State v. Barfield (1979), State v. Oliver (1981)
42 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 · Alexander v. Louisiana · State v. Spencer · State v. Brower · State v. Baldwin
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Objects offered as having played an actual direct role in the incident giving rise to the trial are denoted ‘real evidence.’ McCormick, Evidence § 212 (2d ed. 1972); 1 Stansbury’s North Carolina Evidence § 117, n. 1 (Brandis rev. 1973). Such evidence must be identified as the same object involved in the incident in order to be admissible. State v. Winford, 279 N.C. 58 , 181 S.E. 2d 423 (1971). It must also be shown that since the incident in which it was involved the object has undergone no material change in its condition. See McCormick, supra, § 212, p. 527. See also Hunt v. Wooten, 238 N.C. 42 , 76 S.E. 2d 326 (1953). According to Professor Stansbury, when a tangible object is offered it must be first authenticated or identified, ‘and this can be done only by calling a witness, presenting the exhibit to him and asking him if he recognizes it and, if so, what it is.’ 1 Stansbury’s North Carolina Evidence § 26 (Brandis rev. 1973). “There are no simple standards for determining whether an object sought to be offered in evidence has been sufficiently identified as being the same object involved in the incident giving rise to the trial and shown to have been unchanged in any material respect. ‘No specific rules have grown up about the authentication of chattels, chiefly because the variety of circumstances involved are so great that no specific rules would be suitable.’ 7 Wig-more, Evidence § 2129, at 569 (3d ed. 1940). Consequently, the trial judge possesses and must exercise”
4 later decisions 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.