12 Va. App. 821 - Mery v. Commonwealth’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. “As recently as its decision in Jiminez v. Commonwealth, 241 Va. 244 , 402 S.E.2d 678 (1991), the Supreme Court. . . [restated] the following proposition: ‘‘[W]hen a principle of law is vital to a defendant in a criminal case, the trial court has an affirmative duty properly to instruct a jury about the matter.” Id. at 250 , 402 S.E.2d at 681 . Jiminez does not limit the trial court’s duty in this regard to situations where the issue constitutes a defendant’s sole defense or an element of the crime. Instead, we believe Jiminez articulates a guiding principle to be applied to the facts of each case.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 16 Va. App. 761 - Yeager v. Commonwealth

2. “[N]one of the jury instructions cited by the Commonwealth specifically deals with the issue of consent. Rather, they address the subject only by inference. Those instructions specifically address the issues of force, resistance, and the overcoming of the prosecutrix’s will. We find that their inferential treatment of the principle of consent did not adequately instruct the jury on a subject that was both vital to [the appellant’s] defense and sufficiently supported by the evidence to make it a jury issue.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 64 Va. App. 580 - LaDawn Shrieves King v. Commonwealth of Virginia