3 Md. App. 237 - Wethington v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

50 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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he prior conviction may be shown when it tends to establish (1) motive, (2) intent, (3) absence of mistake or accident, (4) a common scheme or plan embracing the commission of two or more crimes so related to each other that proof of one tends to establish the other, (5) the identity of the person charged with the commission of a crime on trial.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 31 Md. App. 525 - Hepple v. State · 12 Md. App. 48 - Berlin v. State

2. ““We think it too plain to require discussion that the prosecutor’s improper remarks were highly prejudicial, particularly so in view of the fact that appellant, by motion prior to trial, had sought to suppress the prior conviction on the ground, among others that it would mislead the jury into believing that he had committed the present offense because he had been previously convicted of committing a similar offense. In this light, when the prosecutor told the jury that it should consider the fact that ‘This isn’t the first time for this young man; ’ and that ‘He was convicted of assault with intent to rape before,’ we think the occasion was one screaming out for the forceful interdiction of the trial judge, viz., an instruction to the jury that the argument was improper, why it was improper, and a severe reprimand to the prosecutor for making it. We, of course, have no way of calculating the consideration given by the jury to appellant’s prior conviction for assault with intent to rape. We cannot know, therefore, whether the jury considered such evidence as substantive proof of appellant’s guilt or merely as evidence impeaching his credibility as a witness. That the jury was free to consider the prior conviction as substantive proof of guilt is, however, entirely clear and we conclude that the jury was likely misled or influenced to appellant’s prejudice and that under the circumstances the prosecutor’s improper argument deprived appellant of a fair trial. See Wethington v. ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Wilhelm v. State