Fortner v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In any case, the prosecutor made the statements about appellant’s failure to call witnesses in response to appellant’s argument that the State had not called those same witnesses. The inference was that the witnesses would have been unfavorable to the State. Once appellant “opened the door” by commenting on the State’s failure to call the witnesses, he allowed the prosecution to close that same door. See San-ville v. State, 593 P.2d 1340 (Wyo.1979) (discussing the “opening of the door” rule). The State merely pointed out that the witnesses were equally available to appellant and that he could have called them if they were unfavorable to the State. We hold that the trial court did not impermis-sibly shift the burden of proof or deride the presumption of innocence by allowing the State to make the challenged comments.”

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