143 Ill. 2d 435 - People v. Shields’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 federal appellate · 72 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 89 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A review of the errors identified in Reddick demonstrates that those defects may deny a defendant the constitutional right to due process. First, the murder and voluntary manslaughter instructions, when given together, misallocated the appropriate burdens of proof. Under the statutes in effect at that time, a defendant was guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder if the defendant’s actions were provoked by a sudden, intense passion due to serious provocation, or if the defendant believed, although unreasonably, that the use of force was justified to protect himself. (See Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 38, pars. 9—1(a), 9—2.) The voluntary manslaughter instructions at issue in Reddick required the State to prove the existence of the extenuating mental states that reduce murder to voluntary manslaughter. (See IPI Criminal 2d Nos. 7.04, 7.06.) The court noted that the prosecution would normally have little incentive to introduce proof of that nature and that the evidence would most likely have come from the defense, rather than the prosecution. In that event, a jury that literally followed the instructions would not be able to give effect to its finding. See Reddick, 123 Ill. 2d at 194-95 [, 526 N.E.2d at 145 ]. The second defect identified in Reddick was that the murder instruction, when given with the voluntary manslaughter instruction, failed to require the State to disprove the circumstances that reduce murder to manslaughter. These mitigating factors are properly tre”

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

2. “"□Instructions should not be judged in artificial isolation but must instead be considered in light of the record as a whole, including the evidence and arguments presented to the jury. [Citation.] 'Thus not only is the challenged instruction but one of many such instructions, but the process of instruction itself is but one of several components of the trial which may result in the judgment of conviction.’ ” (Shields, 143 Ill. 2d at 446 , 575 N.E.2d at 543 , quoting Cupp v. Naughten (1973), 414 U.S. 141, 147 , 38 L. Ed. 2d 368, 373 , 94 S. Ct. 396, 400 .)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 265 Ill. App. 3d 181 - People v. Adams

3. “Based on the deficiencies described above, we conclude that the use of the erroneous instructions may violate a defendant’s due process right to a fair trial. See Reddick, 123 Ill.2d at 198 , 122 Ill. Dec. 1 , 526 N.E.2d 141 ; Rose v. Lane (7th Cir.1990), 910 F.2d 400, 402 ; Falconer, 905 F.2d at 1137 ; see also Fleming, 924 F.2d at 682 (“At oral argument, the State basically (and wisely) conceded that, after Falconer and Rose, it cannot be disputed that the errors in these jury instructions constitute a violation of due process”).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States Ex Rel. Lynch v. Sandahl