Brown v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The court should not allow the County Attorney to go into detail concerning the crime for which the defendant had been formerly convicted, as that is a collateral matter, not relevant to the crime charged and the conviction may only be inquired into for the purpose of affecting the credibility of the witness. The conviction, the name of the court in which the conviction occurred, the nature of the crime, and the date are all pertinent factors, but the details of the crime involve extraneous matters concerning which the prosecution should not inquire unless counsel for defendant on redirect examination seeks to explain the circumstances of the alleged crime for which the former conviction was sustained in order to lessen the effect of said crime on the jury in determining the credibility to be given to the witness. * * * However, these are matters which are collateral to the issues involved; i. e., the guilt or innocence of defendant of the particular crime charged, and the trial court should be extremely cautious in its limitation of the cross-examination concerning the former convictions.””

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