State v. Ward’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 64 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 67 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[Defendant] started out that he was with his wife and child or wife and children or something that morning. We know he could talk, but he decided just to sit quietly. He didn’t want to say anything that would ‘incriminate himself.’ So he appreciated the criminality of his conduct all right. He was mighty careful with who [sic] he would discuss that criminality, wasn’t he? He wouldn’t discuss it with the people at [Dorothea] Dix [Hospital],”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 175 N.C. App. 202 - State v. Durham · 200 N.C. App. 204 - State v. Graham

2. “[i]t is well established that a criminal defendant has a right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, and under Article I, Section 23 of the North Carolina Constitution. A defendant’s decision to remain silent following his arrest may not be used to infer his guilt, and any comment by the prosecutor on the defendant’s exercise of his right to silence is unconstitutional. “A statement that may be interpreted as commenting on a defendant’s decision [to remain silent] is improper if the jury would naturally and necessarily understand the statement to be a comment on the [exercise of his right to silence.]””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Boyd · 182 N.C. App. 417 - State v. Ezzell

3. “A criminal defendant’s right to remain silent is guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and is made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. “We have consistently held that the State may not introduce evidence that a defendant exercised his [F]ifth [A]mendment right to remain silent.” If a defendant has been given his Miranda warnings, “his silence may not be used against him.” The rationale underlying this rule is that “[t]he value of constitutional privileges is largely destroyed if persons can be penalized for relying on them.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 175 N.C. App. 202 - State v. Durham · 226 N.C. App. 292 - State v. Richardson