State v. Lewis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, and specifically notwithstanding the provisions of Article 788, in the jury selection process, the state and the defendant may exercise all peremptory challenges available to each side, respectively, prior to the full complement of jurors being seated and before being sworn in by the court, and the state or the defendant may exercise any remaining peremptory challenge to one or more of the jurors previously accepted. No juror shall be sworn in until both parties agree on the jury composition or have exercised all challenges available to them, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties.”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 131 So. 3d 153 - State v. Carter · State v. Patterson

2. “The peremptory challenge occupies an important role in the jury selection process. By enabling each side to exclude those jurors it perceives as harboring subtle biases with regard to the case which were not elicited on voir dire or which do - not establish legal cause for a challenge, peremptory challenges are a means of “ ‘eliminat[ing] extremes of partiality on both sides,’,.. thereby ‘assuring the selection of a qualified and unbiased jury.’ ” Holland v. Illinois, 493 U.S. 474, 484 , 110 S.Ct. 803 , 107 L.Ed.2d 905 (1990), quoting Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 219 , 85 S.Ct. 824 , 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965) and Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 91 , 106 S.Ct. 1712 , 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). While peremptory challenges are one means of assuring the selection of a qualified and unbiased jury, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that an erroneous ruling denying a peremptory challenge is not, as a matter of federal constitutional law, a structural error requiring automatic reversal of a defendant’s conviction. Rivera v. Illinois, 556 U.S. 148, 160-61 , 129 S.Ct. 1446 , 173 L.Ed.2d 320 (2009). Rather, state law determines the consequences when a peremptory challenge is erroneously denied. Id. at 161-62 , 129 S.Ct. 1446 . As the Court explained in Rivera , “[i]f a defendant is tried before a qualified jury composed of individuals not challengeable for cause, the loss of a peremptory challenge due to a state court’s good-faith error is not a matter of federal constitutional concern .”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 224 So. 3d 23 - State v. Broussard · 216 So. 3d 367 - State v. Hamilton

3. “When this court addressed the question of harmless error in Taylor , we referenced State v. Johnson, 94-1379 (La.11/27/95), 664 So.2d 94, 100 , which adopts the harmless error test of Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275 [ 113 S.Ct. 2078 , 124 L.Ed.2d 182 ] (1993). Under that test, derived from Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 , 87 S.Ct. 824 , 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), “[t]he inquiry ... is not whether, in a trial that occurred without the error, a guilty verdict would surely have been rendered, but whether the guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial was surely unattributable to the error.” Johnson , 1994-1379 at 14, 664 So.2d at 100 , quoting Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 279 [ 113 S.Ct. 2078 ]. Moreover, under Chapman , it is clear that the burden of proving harmless error rests squarely on the shoulders of the party benefiting from the error. Chapman, 386 U.S. at 24 [ 87 S.Ct. 824 ] (“Certainly error ... casts on someone other than the person prejudiced by it a burden to show that it was harmless. It is for that reason that the original common-law harmless-error rule put the burden on the beneficiary of the error either to prove that there was no injury or to suffer a reversal of his erroneously obtained judgment.”).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. State v. Patterson