133 N.C. App. 448 - State v. Jones’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Both the North Carolina and United States Constitutions forbid the enactment of ex post facto laws. U.S. Const, art. I, § 10; N.C. Const, art. I, § 16. From the beginning of American jurisprudence, the United States Supreme Court has defined an ex post facto law to be a law that “(1) makes an action criminal which was done before the passing of the law and which was innocent when done, (2) aggravates a crime or makes it greater than when it was committed, (3) allows imposition of a different or greater punishment than was permitted when the crime was committed, or (4) alters the legal rules of evidence to permit different or less testimony to convict the offender than was required at the time the offense was committed.” State v. Vance, 328 N.C. 613, 620 , 403 S.E.2d 495, 500 (1991). See also Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386 , 390, 1 L. Ed. 648, 650 (1798). In other words, in order for a criminal law to be an ex post facto violation, it must be both retrospective by applying to events which occurred “ ‘before its enactment, and it must disadvantage the offender affected by it.’ ” Id. (quoting Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 29 , 67 L. Ed. 2d 17, 23 (1981)). Although ex post facto laws have traditionally been directed specifically at legislative actions, the United States Supreme Court has held that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution “forbid retroactive application of an unforeseeable judicial modification of criminal law, to the disadvantage of the”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 138 N.C. App. 37 - State v. Krider