Rutledge v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2000
16 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 Gardner v. Florida · 283 So. 2d 1 - State v. Dixon · 341 So. 2d 1078 - Sosa v. State · Rowe v. State · Fernandez 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is within the sound discretion of the trial judge to decide whether an infant of tender years has sufficient mental capacity and sense of moral obligation to be competent as a witness, and his ruling will not be disturbed, unless a manifest abuse of discretion is shown.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.