185 N.C. App. 408 - State v. Freeman’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

26 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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “As long as the lay witness has a basis of personal knowledge for his opinion, the evidence is admissible.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Sinclair v. State · 189 N.C. App. 640 - State v. Llamas-Hernandez

2. “Assuming Rule 10 requires an exception to be made to the finding of an aggravating factor, we hold the defendant has complied with the Rule. At the time of sentencing the judge said, "[f]or the record, the Court did take into consideration two previous felony convictions, possession of marijuana and LSD, and a charge of escape from the department of corrections." The defendant marked an exception to this statement and made it the subject of an assignment of error. This was sufficient to preserve the question for appellate review. Justice Meyer in his dissent relies on Rule 10 [ (a) ](1) of the Rules of Appellate Procedure and argues that an objection to the finding of the aggravating factor should have been made at the time the factor was found. .... [ Rule 10(a)(1) ] does not have any application to this case. It is directed to matters which occur at trial and upon which the trial court must be given an opportunity to rule in order to preserve the question for appeal. The purpose of the rule is to require a party to call the [trial] court's attention to a matter upon which he or she wants a ruling before he or she can assign error to the matter on appeal. If we did not have this rule, a party could allow evidence to be introduced or other things to happen during a trial as a matter of trial strategy and then assign error to them if the strategy does not work. That is not present in this case. The defendant did not want the [trial] court to find the aggravating factor, and th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 256 N.C. App. 124 - State v. Meadows

3. ““However, ‘[t]he burden upon the defendant is to show more than a possibility that the jury applied the instruction in an unconstitutional manner.’ Further, ‘[w]here the instructions to the jury, taken as a whole, present the law fairly and clearly to the jury, we will not find error even if isolated expressions, standing alone, might be considered erroneous.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 193 N.C. App. 76 - State v. Narron