State v. Strickland’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Defendant argues that his crime arose out of his sexual contact with his thirteen-year-old sister-in-law, who was not a blood relative, and that there was no evidence that he had ever abused his own children. No court in our jurisdiction has directly addressed the constitutionality of a condition of probation preventing a defendant from residing with his own child on similar facts, so we look outside of North Carolina for guidance. In Commonwealth v. LaPointe [Lapointe ], the Supreme Court of Massachusetts stated: “We reject the defendant’s contention that the condition prohibiting him from residing with his son M.L. is invalid because the defendant ‘has no history of any sexual relations with males (adults or children),’ .... Irrespective of gender, as a minor, M.L. could be considered a potential target of the defendant. The judge acted reasonably in providing M.L. with some measure of protection.” Commonwealth v. LaPointe [Lapointe ], 435 Mass. 455 , 759 N.E.2d 294, 299 (2001). We believe the same logic counsels caution in allowing defendant to reside with his own child when he has been convicted of taking indecent liberties with a minor not his child, particularly, as here, when defendant took advantage of the fact that he was residing with the minor victim to facilitate the abuse. See State v. Ehli, 681 N.W.2d 808 (N.D.2004). Further, the victim in the instant case was related to defendant through marriage. To the extent that defendant might feel tempted to sexually abus”

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