People v. Keith’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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The only point in the case presenting a serious difficulty is whether the court abused its discretion in refusing to permit the defense to recall the witness Price for further cross-examination, in order to lay a foundation for the evidence of the witness Rogers as to the declarations of Price, evincing hostility toward the defendant. Both witnesses were present in court, and the application was promptly made before the prosecution had offered any evidence in rebuttal. In such cases it is certainly the better practice to grant the applications, unless the court is satisfied that there is an attempt to trifle with it, or that its time would be uselessly consumed. But necessarily such matters must rest greatly in the discretion of the court below; and it is not our practice to interfere in such cases, except where there has been clearly an abuse of discretion. In this case, the testimony of the witness Price did not differ materially from that of the other witnesses who were present at the homicide, nor from the account which the defendant himself gave of the transaction, when testifying.- Moreover, there was already some testimony in the cause tending strongly to show hostility on the part of Price towards the defendant, and the court may reasonably have considered under these circumstances that it would be only a useless consumption of time to open the door for further proofs on this point. We cannot say that this was such an abuse of discretion as to require a reversal of t”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. People v. Gómez Ramos