Farris v. People’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 federal appellate · 78 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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “It is suggested, and pressed by way of argument, that although the trial court may have erred in allowing this proof, yet, the case being so clearly made out by other evidence and the defense so utterly futile, the error should be held harmless. If the only punishment for the crime of murder in this state was death, the point would be entitled to weight. If it was within the province of the court to assume that the jury would have inflicted the death penalty because the proof of guilt justified it, or if our decision was to affect this case alone, we might hesitate to order a reversal on this theory. The legislature has seen fit to clothe juries with a wide discretion in fixing the punishment to be inflicted upon one convicted of murder. Every defendant on trial for that crime is entitled to the full benefit of the statute. When all else has failed him, he has a right to stand before a jury unprejudiced by incompetent, irrelevant evidence, and appeal to them to spare his life. It is impossible for us to know what the jury in this case would have done but for the introduction of this incompetent evidence, much less is it our province to say what they should have done.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Reppin v. People