Brown v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 2 district · 22 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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Makea Stewart was found dead around 3:30 a.m. on September 10, 1995 in an alleyway behind 3326 Gwynns Falls Parkway, in Baltimore City. She had been shot eight times with a .380 caliber handgun that was owned by petitioner and was later recovered from his car. Petitioner’s fingerprints were found on the magazine of the weapon. A witness, Jerry Manns, reported hearing gunshots from his kitchen window at approximately the time of Ms. Stewart’s reported death. From his window, he saw an African-American male in his twenties leave the alley and drive off in a small two-door car with a malfunctioning muffler. He saw the same man return a short time later with a gun in his hand. Manns heard a single gunshot and then saw the man get back into his car and leave. It was later established that petitioner, an African-American male, drove a two-door Mazda with a faulty muffler. Near Ms. Stewart’s body Detective Barlow discovered her pager, which showed that several calls had been made to the pager from a cellular phone later found in petitioner’s possession. Ms. Stewart’s mother, Jill Sullivan, informed Detective Barlow that Ms. Stewart had been having an affair with a married man named Keith, that her daughter told her two days before the murder that she (Ms. Stewart) was pregnant with Keith’s baby and that she was going to confront Keith about the pregnancy. A friend of Ms. Stewart, Cassandra Green, testified at trial that she overheard Ms. Stewart telling petitioner that she might be ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 153 Md. App. 544 - Brown v. State

2. “No person who, in any criminal proceeding, is charged with the commission of any indictable offence, or any offence punishable on summary conviction, shall be competent or compellable to give evidence for or against himself, nor shall any person be compellable to answer any question tending to criminate himself, nor, in any criminal proceeding, shall any husband be competent or compellable to give evidence for or against his wife, nor shall any wife be competent or compellable to give evidence for or against her husband, except as now allowed by law , nor in any case, civil or criminal, shall any husband be competent or compellable to disclose any communication made to him by his wife during the marriage, nor shall any wife be compellable to disclose any communication made to her by her husband during the marriage.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 241 Md. App. 683 - Wilson v. State

3. “added back to § 3 of Article 37 the provision that, '[i]n all criminal proceedings the husband or wife of the accused party shall be competent to testify[.]' " Brown , 359 Md. at 196 , 753 A.2d 84 . As a result of the 1888 amendment, the law, as ultimately codified in Maryland Code Article 35, §§ 1 and 4 (1957) was that (1) spouses were generally competent and compellable witnesses; (2) in criminal proceedings, the spouse of the defendant was "competent to testify,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 241 Md. App. 683 - Wilson v. State