37 Md. App. 567 - Couplin v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 39 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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is one thing to say that, where the weapon alleged to be a handgun is produced and examined, and the evidence either shows that it was not a handgun or fails to demonstrate adequately that it was, there can be no conviction. It is quite another to extend the ‘sufficiency’ theory to produce the same result when, despite credible testimony that the assailant used a weapon described as a handgun, a small pistol, the weapon was not subject to empirical examination because it was not recovered. There is no suggestion in any of the three cases [relied on by Couplin — Todd v. State, 28 Md.App. 127 [ 343 A.2d 890 ] (1975); Tisdale v. State, supra, 30 Md.App. 334 [ 353 A.2d 653 ] and Howell v. State, supra, 278 Md. 389 , 364 A.2d 797 ], or in any other brought to our attention, that a conviction is unobtainable under this latter circumstance. In Todd , this Court stated at 28 Md.App. 132 [ 343 A.2d 890 ], that, ‘[t]angible evidence in the form of the weapon used in an offense certainly is not an essential to proof of the use of a weapon.’ A fortiori, such proof may rest upon extrinsic evidence as to the nature of the weapon. The statute, § 36B(d), does not require that the weapon actually be fired, as an element of the crime, and we do not believe that, in the absence of the weapon’s recovery, there is any requirement that it be fired simply to provide evidence of its ‘fireability.’ When Ms. Day testified that the appellant stuck a handgun, which she described as a small pistol, i”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 64 Md. App. 324 - Brown v. State

2. ““Thus, under both federal double jeopardy principles and Maryland merger law, the test for determining the identity of offenses is the required evidence test. If each offense requires proof of a fact which the other does not, the offenses are not the same and do not merge. However, if only one offense requires proof of a fact which the other does not, the offenses are deemed the same, and separate sentences for each offense are prohibited."”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 38 Md. App. 550 - Brooks v. State