McMaster v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently May 2020
18 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 Love v. State · Beavers 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Prior Inconsistent Statement. A witness may be impeached by evidence that he has made at other times statements inconsistent with his present testimony. The statements must first be related to him, with the circumstances of times, places, and persons present, and the witness shall be asked whether he has made such statements and, if so, shall be allowed to explain them. If the statements are in writing, they shall be shown to the witness before he is asked any question concerning them.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“As a general rule it is said that the court is the judge of a witness’s competency but that the credibility of a witness is a matter to be determined by a jury. However, competency to testify and credibility of a witness are concepts whose boundaries merge. When a judge decides that a witness is incompetent to testify, he is stating that the witness’s ability to observe, to remember, to relate, or to be truthful is so impaired that his testimony is untrustworthy. When a witness is adjudged competent to testify, this merely means that he has some minimum ability to perform the four functions of a witness. It does not, however, mean that he will do so. Counsel for either party may, of course, attempt to impeach his ability to observe, remember, relate and tell the truth in each particular case. Thus competency and credibility are concepts which weigh the same factors in evaluating a witness’s testimony. Whether a testimonial impairment renders a witness incompetent or merely impeaches his credibility is simply a matter of degree.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.