State v. Dabon’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

31 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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"When a child under the age of 17 years is indicted for murder, the case is one in which only a jury of 12 in the criminal district court can decide whether a felonious homicide was committed, and, if so, whether it was murder or manslaughter, but when the jury decides that the crime was not murder but manslaughter, the verdict means, and is, in effect, that the child was indicted for a crime which the child did not commit. The main object and purpose in the establishment of juvenile courts was not merely to have a different form of procedure for the trial of juvenile offenders, but to deal with them as wards of the state, to be kept apart from the demoralizing influence of hardened criminals, and to be reformed and redeemed, not degraded and ruined. It would be paying attention more to the forms of procedure than to the object and purpose of the law to say that, because this child was indicted for the crime of murder, which she did not commit, she should be finally dealt with and punished as a felon, whereas, if she had been properly accused of the crime which she did commit, she should be dealt with not as a felon but only as a ward of the state, not to be made an example of but to be reformed and redeemed." (Italics mine.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 371 So. 2d 1135 - State v. Sheppard

2. ““There can be no doubt that the verdict ‘guilty of manslaughter’ was equivalent to a verdict of not guilty of the offense charged in the indictment.””

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