5 Md. App. 340 - Nichols v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
80 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 80 later decisions — most recently October 2020 · most notably 5 Md. App. 450 - Williams v. State (1968), 9 Md. App. 15 - Metz v. State (1970)
80 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 Holland v. United States · Breeding v. State · Shelton v. State · Jones v. State · Tasco 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 80 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The law makes no distinction between direct evidence of a fact and evidence of circumstances from which the existence of a fact may be inferred. No greater degree of certainty is required when the evidence is circumstantial than when it is direct, for in either case the trier of fact must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Our function is not to determine whether we would have come to a different conclusion from that of the lower court nor need we be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the appellant’s guilt; we determine whether the lower court was clearly wrong in reaching a verdict of guilty on the evidence.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““When a case has been tried by the lower court without a jury, this Court will review the case upon both the law and the evidence, but the judgment of the lower court will not be set aside on the evidence unless clearly erroneous and due regard will be given to the opportunity of the lower court to judge the credibility of the witnesses.””
1 later decision 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.