State v. Pierce’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 state decisions

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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A general question of whether the witness has ever committed a crime may have little effect on a jury. Where, however, the question contains detailed information such as date, location, victim or nature of the crime, the jury must, as reasonable persons, conclude that the question is based upon information known to the questioner. A negative answer can have little or no effect on this basic conclusion, and a jury is inevitably left with a belief that the witness has committed the inquired of crime, and is a person of bad character. This is true whether the question has support in fact or not.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Hurst

2. “Thus, it is seen that although a defendant testifying in his own defense may, as a general proposition, be impeached the same as any other witness, nevertheless, a court should, on objection being made, limit certain cross-examination of a defendant where the cross-examination is technically purely collateral as to general credibility and the nature [of the matter inquired into] is such as to impair the defendant’s right to a fair trial on the charge brought against him. This does not apply to prior convictions of criminal offenses.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Freeman