34 Md. App. 547 - Blackwell v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently June 2022 · most notably Essex v. Commonwealth (1984), State v. Yarborough (1996)
48 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 Dorsey v. State · 28 Md. App. 640 - Evans v. State · Ross v. State · State v. Evans · Chisley v. State
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... one who drives thus incapacitated [intoxicated] may be inferred to have disregarded life both wantonly and recklessly. When death ensues, inferentially or directly attributable to a breach of a duty by appellant, derived from his self-induced condition of intoxication, driving while drunk may be sufficient to raise the cause of death from simple negligence to gross negligence, as a factual determination to be made by the fact finder. [Emphasis in original.]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“may be acting with such criminal negligence that if he causes the death of another in a resulting traffic accident he will be guilty of manslaughter. And such a motorist may be creating fully as great a human hazard as one who shoots into a house or train”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ ‘The frequently enunciated general rule in this state ... is that in a prosecution for a particular crime, evidence which in any manner shows or tends to show that the accused has committed another crime wholly independent of that for which he is on trial, even though it be a crime of the same type, is irrelevant and inadmissible. Harrison v. State, 276 Md. 122 , 345 A.2d 830 (1975) ... [;] MacEwen v. State, 194 Md. 492, 500 , 71 A.2d 464 (1950); Young v. State, 152 Md. 89, 91 , 136 A. 46 (1927); Weinstein v. State, 146 Md. 80, 88 , 125 A. 889 (1924); Wethington v. State, 3 Md.App. 237, 240 , 238 A.2d 581 (1968); Gorski v. State, 1 Md.App. 200, 202 , 228 A.2d 835 (1967). This principle is merely an application of the policy rule prohibiting the initial introduction by the prosecution of evidence of bad character. Thus, the state may not present evidence of other criminal acts of the accused unless the evidence is ‘substantially relevant for some other purpose than to show a probability that he committed the crime on trial because he is a man of criminal character.’ C. McCormick, Evidence § 190 (2d ed. 1972). There are exceptions to this general exclusionary rule which, perhaps, are equally well-recognized. Thus, evidence of other crimes may be admitted when it tends to establish (1) motive, (2) intent, (3) absence of mistake, (4) a common scheme or plan embracing the commission of two or more crimes so related to each other that proof of one tends to establish the other, an”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.