20 Md. App. 201 - Spencer v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 40 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 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"Although the peremptory challenge, to be sure, only entitles a defendant to reject jurors and not to select others, there is at least some element of indirect selection inexorably at work in the very process of elimination. The right to reject need not be exercised in the dark, but is, under circumstances such as those here available, a right of informed and comparative rejection.””

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 113 Md. App. 674 - Goren v. United States Fire Insurance · 111 Md. App. 208 - Booze v. State

2. ““The essential nature of the peremptory challenge is that it is one exercised without a reason stated, without inquiry and without being subject to the court’s control ____ While challenges for cause permit rejection of jurors on a narrowly specified, provable and legally cognizable basis of partiality, the peremptory permits rejection for a real or imagined partiality that is less easily designated or demonstrable____ It is often exercised upon the ‘sudden impressions and unaccountable prejudices we are apt to conceive upon the bare looks and gestures of another,’ ... upon a juror’s ‘habits and associations,’ ... or upon the feeling that ‘the bare question [of a juror’s] indifference may sometimes provoke a resentment,’ ... It is no less frequently exercised on grounds normally thought irrelevant to legal proceedings or official action, namely, the race, religion, nationality, occupation or affiliations of people summoned for jury duty. For the question a prosecutor or defense counsel must decide is not whether a juror of a particular race or nationality is in fact partial, but whether one from a different group is less likely to be.” (Citations omitted).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 74 Md. App. 353 - St. Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church, Inc. v. Smith

3. “The tactical prospect then facing [Spencer] was this: He had three peremptory challenges remaining and the State had none. Seat no. 5 in the jury was vacant. The last list of 13 available names was sitting before him. He knew (or thought he knew) the order in which those 13 persons would be called. By exercising or not exercising some or all of his remaining peremptories, the appellant was in a position to select (by not rejecting) any of the next four names on the list to fill seat no. 5. He chose to go for the fourth name on the list. Accordingly, when the first three names on the list were called (and they were called in predictable order), [Spencer] exhausted his 18th, 19th and 20th peremptory challenges.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 183 Md. App. 188 - Adams v. State