State v. O'Leary’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The harmless-error doctrine recognizes the principle that the central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, and promotes public respect for the criminal process by focusing on the underlying fairness of the trial rather than on the virtually inevitable presence of immaterial error.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Brooks

2. “Errors that partially or completely deny a defendant the right to the basic trial process, such as the complete denial of a defendant's right to counsel, or adjudication by a biased judge, rise to the level of fundamental unfairness, thereby obviating consideration of the harmless error doctrine.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Kousounadis

3. “Generally, . . . if [a] defendant had counsel and was tried by an impartial adjudicator, there is a strong presumption that any other errors that may have occurred are subject to harmless-error analysis.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Kousounadis