State v. Ford’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 1 district · 81 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 88 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The admissibility of any such evidence remains subject to attack. Issues pertaining to relevancy or prejudice may be raised. For example, expert testimony may be presented to impeach the particular procedures used in a specific test or the reliability of the results obtained. See, e.g., People v. Castro, 144 Misc.2d 956 , 545 N.Y.S.2d 985 (1989). In addition, traditional challenges to the admissibility of evidence such as the contamination of the sample or chain of custody questions may be presented. These issues relate to the weight of the evidence. The evidence may be found to be so tainted that it is totally unreliable and, therefore, must be excluded.”

   6 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Smith v. Deppish · State v. Wimberly

2. ““Prong I. Is there a theory, which is generally accepted in the scientific community, which supports the conclusion that DNA forensic testing can produce reliable results? Prong H. Are there techniques or experiments that currently exist that are capable of producing reliable results in DNA identification and which are generally accepted in the scientific community? Prong III. Did the testing laboratory perform the accepted scientific techniques in analyzing the forensic samples in this particular case?””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. People v. Fishback · State v. Vandebogart

3. “(1) Extraction: DNA is removed from the specimen and "washed” with an organic solvent. (2) Fragmentation: the extracted DNA chain is then cut into fragments at specific sites by mixing it with a restriction enzyme. (3) Gel electrophoresis: the DNA is placed in a gel to which an electrical current is applied, causing separation of the fragments into bands according to their length. (4) Southern blotting: the DNA bands are transferred to a nylon membrane while retaining the same positions they previously occupied on the gel. The double-stranded bands are then treated with a chemical that causes them to separate into single strands. (5) Hybridization: genetic probes (DNA clones) are applied, which bind to a specific, complementary DNA sequence on the membrane; the excess probe is then washed off. (6) Autoradiograph: the membrane is exposed to an x-ray film and developed so that the DNA banding patterns and their lengths can be visualized. Finally, the autoradio-graph is interpreted by comparing the DNA print to another DNA sample to determine if they match based on band length.”

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