Sparks v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1877
Citation profile
32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently December 1974 · most notably Walker v. State (1890), 17 Ala. App. 390 - Brandes v. State (1920)
32 state decisions — followed in 13 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 Wooster v. State · Williamson v. Branch Bank at Montgomery
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is the duty of a presiding judge, in all cases, civil or criminal, to give strict attention to the evidence. And it is also his duty, to propound to the witnesses such questions as he may deem necessary to elicit any relevant and material evidence, without regard to the effect of such evidence, whether it may benefit or prejudice the one party or the other — the development and establishment of the truth, is his purpose and duty.””
1 later decision 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.