93 N.J. Super. 435 - State v. McLaughlin’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
2 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently December 2014
2 district · 8 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 Griffin v. California · Fisher v. United States · Dombrowski v. Pfister · Etchieson v. Texas · Crane v. United States
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Defendant McLaughlin did not take the stand. This was quite obvious. As a matter of fact, if you didn’t get what it was, I said to the Judge at the end of the State’s case, “The Defendant McLaughlin rests.” That meant that the Defendant McLaughlin’s case as far as he was concerned by way of defense had stopped at that point. Remember the laws of which I speak were not made for James McLaughlin. These laws were made for every defendant who comes before our courts. These laws were made for you and me if, God forbid, anybody is ever involved in anything. Under our law every defendant has a right to take the stand if he so chooses. He cannot be made to take the stand against himself. Under our law he has the right to take the stand or not to take the stand if he so chooses. It is the presumption of innocence. So that under our law when you are a defendant in a criminal case if in your mind the State has not proven the case and a decision has been made by the defendant and his lawyer, no defendant must take the stand and testify because the reason we’re here is it is the State’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the defendant, not the burden of the defendant to prove his innocence. * * *”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The defendant, James Oswald McLaughlin, has requested me to charge, and I do instruct you, that one of our statutes which is New Jersey Statute 2A:84A-17(1). (sic) It reads as follows: “Every person has in any criminal action in which he is an accused a right not to be called as a witness and not to testify.” The defendant, James Oswald McLaughlin, is entitled, as is every defendant to have the jury consider all of the facts in evidence and even if he does not testify as a witness, he is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless and until the jury agrees upon a verdict of guilty after considering all of the evidence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he judge handled the matter forcefully the instant it arose, in a manner which made it plain to the jury that the comment was to be eradicated from their minds and not employed by them in any respect.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.