180 N.C. App. 664 - State v. West’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. “[a] judge presiding over a jury trial must instruct the jury as to a lesser[-]included offense of the crime charged where there is evidence from which the jury could reasonably conclude that the defendant committed the lesser[ ] included offense. In determining whether the evidence is sufficient to support the submission of the issue of a defendant’s guilt of a lesser[ [included offense to the jury, courts must consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the defendant. However, if the State’s evidence is sufficient to fully satisfy its burden of proving each element of the greater offense and there is no evidence to negate those elements other than [the] defendant’s denial that he committed the offense, [the] defendant is not entitled to an instruction on the lesser offense.”

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

2. “Nothing within the Sentencing Act specifically addresses the effect of joined charges when calculating previous convictions to arrive at prior record levels. We agree . . . that the assessment of a defendant’s prior record level using joined convictions would be unjust and in contravention of the intent of the General Assembly. See State v. Jones, 353 N.C. 159, 170 , 538 S.E.2d 917, 926 (indicating that “[w]hen interpreting statutes, this Court presumes that the legislature did not intend an unjust result”). Further, “the ‘rule of lenity’ forbids a court to interpret a statute so as to increase the penalty that it places on an individual when the Legislature has not clearly stated such an intention.””

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