Johnson v. Dye’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

28 federal appellate · 5 district · 9 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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The other question to be noticed is that raised by the following averments in the application for the writ of habeas corpus: ‘Your petitioner further states that he is a negro, and that the race feeling and race prejudice is so bitter in the State of Mississippi against negroes that he is in danger, if removed to that State, of assassination and of being killed, and that he cannot have a fair and impartial trial in any of the courts of that State, and that to deliver him over to the authorities of that State is to deprive him, as a citizen of the United States and a citizen and resident of the State of Mississippi, of the equal protection of the laws.’ It is clear that the executive authority of a State in which an alleged fugitive may be found, and for whose arrest a demand is made in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States, need not be controlled in the discharge of his duty by considerations of race or color, nor by a mere suggestion — certainly not one unsupported by proof, as was the case here — that the alleged fugitive will not be fairly and justly dealt with in the State to which it is sought to remove him nor be adequately protected, while in the custody of such State, against the action of lawless and bad men. The court that heard the application for discharge on writ of habeas corpus was entitled to assume, as no doubt the Governor of Missouri assumed, that the State demanding the arrest and delivery of the accused had no other object in vie”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Murray v. Burns

2. “We shall not set out in this opinion the revolting barbarities which Johnson and his witnesses state were habitually perpetrated as standard chain gang practice. To perpetrate these atrocities in an opinion is to be unfair to the American scene as a whole and to reflect little credit on this generation for posterity. It is enough to state that leg-irons and most frequent beatings were among the `minor' constant cruelties.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Robert Gilmore Jr Inmates United States of America v. People of the State of California