State v. Wallace’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In this case, the trial court did not address any connection between the two crimes to establish if the allegations by the victim’s sister were admissible. The court instead ruled, “it goes to a common scheme or plan because of the close degree of similarity between the conduct, with regards to the two victims.” When the State was asked to explain why the testimony was essential to its case, the solicitor responded: This is technically a credibility case, that’s what it is. It’s one witness’s word against potentially another witness’s word. The evidence would be relevant and would be essential to the State’s case because it is a piece of evidence, just like any other piece of evidence, that goes to prove or disprove the case. And this is strictly a credibility case: Therefore, this testimony is necessary to, again, prove the victim’s allegations. This argument could be used to admit testimony of any prior crime when a defendant is accused of a subsequent but similar crime. It falls far short of the threshold for the admission of a prior crime under the common scheme or plan exception to Lyle . Accordingly, the trial court erred in admitting the evidence on this basis. It was also error for the trial judge to attempt to limit the testimony of the sister so that there would be a close similarity between the prior bad act and the crime charged. The court noted that the testimony of the sister was more egregious than that of the victim and ordered the testimony redacted, stating,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Kirton