344 So. 2d 915 - Smith v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently May 2013
13 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 Russ v. State · Mercer v. State · Febre v. State · 117 So. 2d 473 - Williams v. State · 323 So. 2d 557 - Halliwell 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Society has a deeply-rooted interest in the preservation of the peace of families, and in the maintenance of the sacred institution of marriage; and its strongest safeguard is to preserve with jealous care any violation of those hallowed confidences inherent in, and inseparable from, the marital status. Therefore the law places the band of its prohibition upon any breach of the confidence between husband and wife, by declaring all confidential communications between them to be incompetent matter for either of them to expose of witnesses. ****** The matter that the law prohibits either the husband or wife from testifying to as witnesses includes any information obtained by either during the marriage, and by reason of its existence. It should not be confined to mere statements by one to the other, but embraces all knowledge upon the part of either obtained by reason of the marriage relation, and which, but for the confidence growing out of it, would not have been known.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The great danger inherent in an inquiry concerning causation of an otherwise confidential conversation between husband and wife is the potential chilling effect upon the policy underlying the marital privilege. A married couple should be secure in the knowledge that their private communications will be protected and will not be susceptible to exposure by an after-the-fact determination that the communications did not arise as a direct result of the marital relationship.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The wife also testified as to a conversation with her husband during which the removal and burial of the victim's body were discussed. The State argued, inter alia, that the marital privilege did not apply to communications made in the furtherance of a crime. The appellate court refused”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.