State v. Ellert’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Defense counsel did object to some of the prosecutor’s cross-examination of the victim concerning telephone conversations which the prosecutor had with the victim not long after the shooting, the objection being that the prosecutor, because he was the prosecutor, could not testify concerning these communications and yet his leading questions had the effect of being unsworn testimony. ABA Standards Relating to the Prosecution Function, § 3.1(F) (Approved Draft, 1971), provides that: Whenever feasible, the prosecutor should avoid interviewing a prospective witness except in the presence of a third person unless the prosecutor is prepared to forego impeachment of a witness by the prosecutor’s own testimony as to what the witness stated in an interview or to seek leave to withdraw from the case in order to present his impeaching testimony. In this case, when it became clear to the prosecutor that the victim would not be testifying for the state but rather for the defense, the prosecutor complied with the rule and had a third-party witness testify to a conversation by the prosecutor with the victim. The questions to which defense counsel objected related to the prosecutor’s cross-examining the victim about earlier telephone conversations. It may be that under the circumstances the prosecutor should have withdrawn from the case prior to trial or else foregone using leading questions to cross-examine the victim about the conversations. But we do not believe that the error, if any, w”

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