Commonwealth v. Scott’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and Section 13 of the Constitution of Kentucky guarantee that no person shall be tried twice for the same offense. However, the principle of double jeopardy does not prevent re-trial if the proceedings are terminated because “[t]he trial court, in exercise of its discretion finds that the termination is manifestly necessary.” As stated, a finding of manifest necessity is a matter left to the sound discretion of the trial court. Thus, a trial court’s grant of a mistrial will be overturned only if it is clearly erroneous or constitutes an abuse of discretion.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Radford v. Lovelace

2. “[t]here [was] nothing in the record ... indicating that the jurors were biased against the Commonwealth or were unable to assess the evidence in an impartial manner.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Padgett

3. “[T]he power to grant a mistrial ought to be used sparingly and only with the utmost caution, under urgent circumstances, and for very plain and obvious causes.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Padgett