310 N.J. Super. 140 - State v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “My view of that child is, A, sure, she is frightened but it’s beyond the fear I’ve seen in other children who have testified in similar cases before me in similar courtrooms as this. I have had other eases involving children of seven, eight, nine, ten and they’re all afraid to come into court. But that is overcome in the past at least by them coming in a day or week before and sitting in the [witness] seat. This child is a very frightened little girl. That fear comes through quite clearly. It comes through also if [T.I.] doesn’t want to go on about a question, [T.I.] puts her head down and doesn’t say anything and then you have to ask her another question to draw her out. Now clearly from [T.I.] the facts are quite evident. Although she has no trouble sleeping, her mother confirms that fact, she still has a lot of fear of [defendant]. It comes through her mother who testified that the little girl is frightened of this gentleman and of the person, Miss Bonanno; who has interviewed the child and talked to the child and acted as her counselor and it is clear that she has fear not only of testifying in this room before 12 or 14 strangers but also of this particular gentleman. I have written down the following notes on [T.I.], some of which were questions by the State and some of which were mine and some defense questions. She said quite clearly in there she could not testify in person before the jury. That she’s scared when she sees the defendant. That she’s not able to sit in th”

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