State v. Harry’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “every circumstance relied upon by the State [must] be proven beyond a reasonable doubt; and ... all of the circumstances so proven [must] be consistent with each other and taken together, point conclusively to the guilt of the accused to the exclusion of every other reasonable hypothesis. It is not sufficient that they create a probability, though a strong one and if, assuming then to be true they may be accounted for upon any reasonable hypothesis which does not include the guilt of the accused, the proof has failed.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Cherry · State v. Grippon

2. “A motion for a directed verdict made at the close of the [state’s] case is not sufficient to preserve error unless renewed at the close of all the evidence, because once the defense has come forward with its proof, the propriety of a directed verdict can only be tested in terms of all the evidence. If there has been no motion for a directed verdict at the close of all the evidence, it cannot be said that the trial judge has ever been given an opportunity to pass on the sufficiency of the evidence as it stood when finally submitted to the jury. In effect, therefore, a motion for directed verdict made only at the close of one party’s evidence loses any significance once it is denied and the other party, by producing further evidence, chooses not to stand on it.”

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