State v. Dennis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

56 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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The excited utterance exception is based on the rationale that 'the startling event suspends the declarant's process of reflective thought, reducing the likelihood of fabrication.'”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Washington · State v. LaCoste

2. “`Hearsay' is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Holmes · State v. Washington

3. “The majority holds that the brother's "excited utterance," inculpating only the appellant, made only one to two minutes after the shooting, and made to a witness who observed the brother leaving the scene while attempting to secrete the murder weapon, is so inherently reliable that its admission is constitutionally permissible. The suggestion that this statement is reliable because the brother did not have time to concoct a blameshifting story is naive, as is any assertion that the context in which the statement was made provides a substantial guarantee of its trustworthiness. To characterize all `excited utterances' as `firmly rooted' hearsay exceptions exempt from the strictures of the Confrontation Clause is an oversimplification similar to that made by the Virginia Supreme Court and criticized by the United States Supreme Court in Lilly v. Virginia, 527 U.S. 116 , 119 S.Ct. 1887 , 144 L.Ed. 2d 117 (1999). In the Lilly plurality opinion, the Court explicitly reiterated, "It is clear that our cases consistently have viewed an accomplice's statements that shift or spread blame to a criminal defendant as falling outside the realm of those `hearsay exception[s] [that are] so trustworthy that adversarial testing can be expected to add little to [the statements'] reliability." 527 U.S. at 133 , 119 S.Ct. at 1898 (internal citation omitted).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 351 N.J. Super. 93 - State v. Rivera