Smith v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1877
Citation profile
19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently March 2001
19 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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 State v. Hodge · Engleman v. State · Turbeville v. State · Smathers v. State · State v. Creson
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘If you should believe it to be true, that the goods mentioned, or some portion of them, were stolen from Theophilus Wright, about the time charged in the indictment,, and that, shortly after that time, they, or some portion of them, were found in the exclusive possession of the defendant, such possession imposes upon the defendant the duty and burden of explaining his possession; and if he has failed to satisfactorily account as to how he came by the stolen property, or has given a false account of how he came into possession of such stolen property, the law presumes that the defendant stole such property, and this presumption may be strong enough to justify you in finding the defendant guilty of larceny.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Dedrick v. State““We think the court erred in saying to the jury, as it did in substance, that, in the absence of a satisfactory explanation of the possession of the stolen property, the law presumes that the defendant had stolen it—such a presumption being an inference of fact merely, and not amounting to a rule of law.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Dedrick v. State
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.