State v. Pearce’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently July 2003 · most notably State v. Smith (1980), State v. Brown (1985)
40 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 Roberts v. Florida · Cappaert v. United States · Moore v. United States · State v. Taylor · State v. Greene
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The trial court instructed the jury on accident as follows: If Jesse Elaine Smith died by accident or misadventure, that is, without an unlawful act on the part of the Defendant, then the Defendant would be not guilty. The burden of proving accident is not on the Defendant. His assertion of accident is merely a denial that he committed any crime. The burden remains on the State to prove the Defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Specifically, under the evidence in this case if the State fails to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jessie Elaine Smith did not sustain any injuries to her head as a result of a fall off of a bed and that those injuries resulting from a fall off a bed were not the proximate cause of Jessie Elaine Smith’s death, if the State fails to prove these things — excuse me — if the State fails to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these things did not occur, then Jessie Elaine Smith’s death would be the result of accident or misadventure and it would be your duty to return a verdict of not guilty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[a] defendant is entitled to have the different permissible verdicts arising on the evidence presented to the jury under proper instructions, and error in failing to submit the lesser included offense is not cured by a verdict of guilty of the charged crime because it cannot be known whether the jury would have convicted on the lesser crime if it had been correctly submitted. However, this principle applies only when there is evidence of the crime of lesser degree.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Barlowe
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.