State v. SINCLAIR’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 101 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 110 later decisions — most recently August 2011 · most notably State v. Carter (1982), State v. Crisantos (Arriagas) (1986)
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 101 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 United States v. Wade · Stovall v. Denno · Griffin v. California · Gilbert v. California · Scalza v. United States
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 110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“if on the evidence it would not be idle to have the jury decide”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Defendant Sinclair argues that the comments of the prosecutor in his summation that Friedman’s testimony about the events in his store was ‘uncontradicted’ infringed upon his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. He contends that the jury, because of the prosecutor’s comments, would likely be led into drawing an inference of guilt from his failure to take the stand. “The prosecutor has the right to make fair comment on the evidence and to argue to the jury the significance of the testimony presented, but when he begins to discuss the significance of what testimony was not presented and if it does not clearly appear that persons other than defendant could have been called, there is a danger that he may reflect upon a defendant’s Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. See Griffin v. State of California, 380 U.S. 609 , 85 S.Ct. 1229 , 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965) and State v. Lanzo, 44 N.J. 560 , 210 A.2d 613 (1965). Every time a prosecutor stresses a failure to present testimony, the facts and circumstances must be-closely examined to see whether the defendant’s right to remain silent has been-violated. See State v. Pickles, 46 N.J. 542, 579 , 218 A.2d 609 (1966). We do. not mean to preclude the legitimate inferences from non-production of evidence to which the prosecutor may fairly refer. [Omitting authorities.] However, in the present case we think that the repeated remark that Friedman’s testimony was ‘uncontradicted’ — in view of the testimony showing that only S”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“To force the jury to choose on the evidence in the case between first degree murder and acquittal raises the possibility that the defendants might have been convicted of first degree murder though their guilt was of a lesser degree.”
3 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.