State v. Bass’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently September 2011
24 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 State v. Irick · State v. McKinney · State v. Rogers · State v. Price · State v. Cook
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“when the State relies on fingerprints found at the scene of the crime, in order to withstand motion for nonsuit, there must be substantial evidence of circumstances from which the jury can find that the fingerprints could have been impressed only at the time the crime was committed. As stated in State v. Miller, supra , and quoted in State v. Scott, [ 296 N.C. 519 , 251 S.E.2d 414 (1979)]: These cases establish the rule that testimony by a qualified expert that fingerprints found at the scene of the crime correspond with the fingerprints of the accused, when accompanied by substantial evidence of circumstances from which the jury can find that the fingerprints could only have been impressed at the time the crime was committed, is sufficient to withstand motion for nonsuit and carry the case to the jury. The soundness of the rule lies in the fact that such evidence logically tends to show that the accused was present and participated in the commission of the crime.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[t]he State’s evidence [establishes] only these facts and circumstances: (1) four latent prints found on a window screen of the house in which the crimes charged were committed had eleven points of similarity with known inked impressions of a defendant’s prints; (2) no prints of defendant were found inside the house; and (3) when informed of the presence of his fingerprints at the scene and asked why they were there and if he entered the house, defendant responded, “I can’t say that I did. I don’t know. I am not going to say I did and I am not going to say I didn’t.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Williams
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.