Fontaine v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently December 2018
21 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 State v. Henshaw · State v. Feng · State v. Collazo · State v. Brown · Palmigiano v. Mullen
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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Because the trial justice was presented with conflicting testimony and evidence, he was able to make sound credibility findings by assessing the facts and the totality of the circumstances before him.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““At such an evidentiary hearing the trial justice may consider the proposed recanted accusation of the complaining witnesses and may assess the credibility thereof. The trial justice may further weigh the credibility of these statements in light of the defendant’s admissions in open court or by affidavit of the factual basis for his plea. We do not believe that this process may be carried out without taking the testimony of witnesses at an evidentiary hearing.” Id. at 625 (emphasis added).”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Ferrell v. Wall“"[t]his is part of the evidence involved in the credibility issue that the trial justice weighed in his determination. * * * The fact that the complaining witnesses did not initially testify to the charges alleged in open court does not automatically discredit their original charges of criminal conduct perpetrated by the applicant.” Id.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Ferrell v. Wall
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.