160 N.C. App. 503 - State v. Holden’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he effect of the instruction in the case sub judice is to permit the jury to return guilty verdicts without agreeing ... on which two particular incidents of statutory rape defendant was guilty [of.] .. . Thus, without any instruction differentiating between the multiple counts, it was possible for a jury to return a verdict of guilty of two counts of statutory rape with some jurors believing defendant guilty of the incidents in the van, and others believing defendant guilty of two incidents at the victim’s grandmother’s house, or any number of other combinations.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 165 N.C. App. 548 - State v. Lawrence

2. “The [Diaz] line establishes that a disjunctive instruction, which allows the jury to find a defendant guilty if he commits either of two underlying acts, either of which is in itself a separate offense, is fatally ambiguous because it is impossible to determine whether the jury unanimously found that the defendant committed one particular offense. The [Hartness] line establishes that if the trial court merely instructs the jury disjunctively as to various alternative acts which will satisfy an element of the offense, the requirement of unanimity is satisfied.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 170 N.C. App. 200 - State v. Lawrence

3. “be convicted of any crime but by the unanimous verdict of a jury in open court.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 167 N.C. App. 808 - State v. Suitt