People v. Whitfield’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently December 2008
5 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.
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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“One of the exceptions to the general rule barring the use of character to prove conformance therewith on a particular occasion is the so-called mercy rule found in ... 404(a)(1), which allows a criminal defendant an absolute right to introduce evidence of his character to prove that he could not have committed the crime.... Once a defendant introduces [pertinent] character testimony, the pros-^ ecution can then rebut that testimony, (emphasis added)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. People v. Miller“(a) Evidence of a person’s character or a trait of his character is not admissible for the purpose of proving that he acted in conformity therewith on a particular occasion, except : (1) Evidence of a pertinent trait of his character offered by an accused, or by the prosecution to rebut the same.... (emphasis added)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. People v. Miller
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.