United States v. Everett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

24 federal appellate · 9 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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “‘Significant’ evidence is usually understood to mean important—as distinct from trivial—evidence in a trial_ Here, Parks was the prosecution’s only real witness. But, because of his past convictions and involvement in the instant crime, his credibility had come under heavy attack. The prosecution accordingly felt obliged to introduce proof corroborating his testimony. Thus, this ‘other crimes’ corroborating evidence met the test of being ‘significant’ because it provided ‘important’ details describing the formation and implementation of the appellant’s plan to rob the Chemical Bank and reinforced the testimony of the key government witness against Everett. ‘Direct’ corroborating evidence is evidence that is not wholly disconnected, remote, or collateral to the matter corrobo rated. In other words, if the chain of inferences necessary to connect the corroborative evidence to the ultimate fact to be proven is too lengthy, the evidence is not directly corroborative; the reason is that the connection between the corroborative proof and the ultimate fact that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt becomes too attenuated and thereby weakened in probative value. In such a case, its admission as ‘other crimes’ evidence is much more likely to adhere unfairly to defendant without the justifying presence of probativeness on an issue other than propensity.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Pitts