State v. Humphries’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
41 federal appellate · 35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 91 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Engle v. Isaac (1982), State v. Long (1978)
41 federal appellate · 35 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 In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Speiser v. Randall · Leland v. Oregon · Tot v. United States · State v. Williams
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 91 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Every person accused of an offense is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the burden of proof is upon the prosecution. The burden of going forward with an affirmative defense is upon the accused. 6”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Thomas v. Arn · State v. Long“The state contends that this statute is only a partial codification of a principle of common law, and that the defendant retains the common law burden of proving self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence. We cannot agree with that contention. The assignment of the burden of going forward with evidence of an affirmative defense has acquired a well-recognized meaning in American jurisprudence, and there can be no substantial doubt that the General Assembly intended to adopt the majority rule. Every party who bears the burden of proof on an issue in the sense of the burden of persuasion, necessarily also bears the burden of going forward with the evidence, for the party will lose on that issue unless evidence is presented. If the General Assembly had wished to impose the burden of persuasion as well as the burden of going forward with the evidence, we may properly assume that they would have used language appropriate to do so. They could simply have provided that the defendant has the same burden of proof of affirmative defenses as the state has of making out a prima facie case, but they did not do so. The obvious meaning of R.C. 2901.05(A) is that the state bears the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt through the trial, and that the burden does not shift to the defendant. In order to raise an affirmative defense, which is now statutorily defined as either “a defense expressly designated as affirmative” or “a defense involving an excuse or justification peculiarly w”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Thomas v. Arn“This Court has consistently recognized that there are certain “ justification^] for admitted conduct” allowed to a defendant in a criminal case, provable for the most part under the plea of not guilty, which are referred to as “affirmative defenses.” As characterized by one authority, they represent not a mere denial or contradiction of evidence which the prosecution has offered as proof of an essential element of the crime charged, but, rather, they represent a substantive or independent matter “which the defendant claims exempts him from liability even if it is conceded that the facts claimed by the prosecution are true.” Among those defenses in Ohio, are self-defense, duress, insanity, and intoxication.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Thomas v. Arn
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.