53 Wash. 2d 276 - State v. Pethoud’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently August 2011
6 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.
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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In interpreting RCW 5.60.050, providing that persons of unsound mind shall not be competent to testify, this court said in State v. Moorison, 43 Wn. (2d) 23, 259 P. (2d) 1105 : “The generally recognized common-law rule now is that an insane person is competent to testify if at the time of his presentation as a witness he understands the nature of an oath and is capable of giving a correct account of what he has seen and heard. (Citing cases.) ” This court adopted the rule, as applicable under our statute, and further held that if a person has been adjudicated insane, a presumption arises that he is absolutely incompetent as a witness, which presumption may be rebutted by the party offering him as a witness, but that in the absence of such an adjudication, no such presumption arises. Where there has been no adjudication, the burden of showing incompetency on account of unsoundness of mind is on him who objects on that ground.”
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.