Cosco v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently March 2016
2 federal appellate · 14 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 Terminal Freight Handling Co. v. Solien · 41 Ill. 2d 528 - The People v. Cagle · Lynch v. Household Finance Corp. · Alcala v. State · Bentley 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"[T]he term `reasonable doubt' need not be defined and a trial court would be well-advised to avoid instructions on reasonable doubt. Therefore, an instruction purporting to define reasonable doubt should not be given. "We again reviewed the matter of giving a reasonable-doubt instruction in Bentley v. State, Wyo., 502 P.2d 203, 206 . In that case we said the phrase `reasonable doubt' is self-explanatory and definitions do not clarify its meaning but rather tend to confuse the jury." Cosco v. State, 521 P.2d 1345, 1346 (Wyo. 1974).”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“ac— cused of crime with the presumption of innocence, imposes upon the State the burden of establishing his guilt, beyond a rea'sonable doubt. To establish the guilt of the defendant beyond all reasonable doubt, is not meant that such guilt shall be established to an absolute certainty. Absolute certainty in the establishment of any fact 'is rarely attainable and never requlred in Courts of Justice. Id. Relying on our decision in Bentley, we reversed the conviction, finding that the trial court erred when it gave the”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(olur disposition of this case should make it clear that hereafter our court will consider it reversible error to give a confusing instruction defining reasonable doubt.”
2 later decisions 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.