Beverly v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis
118 F.3d 900 · 1997
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably Gaines v. Kelly (2000), Humphrey v. Cain (1998)
10 federal appellate · 1 district ·
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 In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Holland v. United States · Sullivan v. Louisiana · Victor v. Nebraska · Henderson v. Brown
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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“However, we need not resolve this issue since we hold that the reasonable doubt charge, taken as a whole, did not deprive Beverly of his constitutional rights. It is well settled that due process requires the government to prove each element of a criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364 , 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1072-73 , 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). Although the Constitution neither compels nor prohibits the defining of the term “reasonable doubt,” any attempt to define it “ ‘must correctly convey the concept of reasonable doubt to the jury.’ ” Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1, 5 , 114 S.Ct. 1239, 1243 , 127 L.Ed.2d 583 (1994) (quoting Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 140 , 75 S.Ct. 127, 137-38 , 99 L.Ed. 150 (1954)) (alterations omitted). As recent cases in this Circuit have demon strated, however, the term is “perhaps one of the least susceptible to verbal formulation.” United States v. Birbal, 62 F.3d 456, 457 (2d Cir.1995); see, e.g., Vargas v. Keane, 86 F.3d 1273, 1280 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 117 S.Ct. 240 , 136 L.Ed.2d 169 (1996); Chalmers v. Mitchell, 73 F.3d 1262, 1266 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 117 S.Ct. 106 , 136 L.Ed.2d 60 (1996). It has been suggested that trial courts either stick to tried and true pattern jury instructions defining reasonable doubt, Vargas, 86 F.3d at 1280 , or not define the term at all, see id. at 1283 (Weinstein, J., concurring) (“ ‘The phrase “reasonable doubt” is self-explanatory and is its own ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A]lthough the [requirement of a] 'good sound substantial' [reason] should not be used, and we applaud the [New York state court] for condemning it in the exercise of its supervisory authority, we cannot conclude that the entire charge was constitutionally deficient.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Humphrey v. Cain“was intended, and likely understood, to mean that the proper foundation of a reasonable doubt was in fact rather than fantasy. 26 Id. at 1268 (emphasis in original). See also Beverly v. Walker, 118 F.3d 900 , 904 (2d Cir.1997) (”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Humphrey v. Cain
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.