Kiser v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Even where extraneous offense evidence is not probative with respect to any fact of consequence to the determination of an action, it may still be relevant, and therefore admissible, if it creates a context from which the fact finder may more ably make judgments about those other facts which are of consequence to the determination of the action. The term “res gestae,” used in the past to refer to contextual evidence, has come to subsume two different varieties of such evidence, and thus to obscure the distinction between them; those two varieties are (a) other offenses indivisibly connected with the offense charged, and (b) other, general background evidence helpful to the jurors’ understanding of events at issue in the case before them. When reviewing the admission of evidence as contextual evidence, the preferred approach is now to distinguish between these two different varieties of contextual evidence by referring to the former as same transaction contextual evidence and to the latter as background contextual evidence.”

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

2. “Here, it would not have been impracticable to describe the argument between appellant and [his ex-wife] and its subject matter and the magnitude of appellant’s state of agitation that night, while omitting any specific description of appellant’s choking or grabbing [his ex-wife]. With that omission, the remaining events still present a coherent account that would have made sense to the jury.”

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

3. “In light of appellant’s admission to this offense, we are persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the error in admitting evidence of the aggravated bank robbery and the burglary did not contribute to appellant’s conviction.”

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