Hancock v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 33 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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “• Instruction 22: “Self-defense is permitted a person solely because of necessity.' Self-defense is not available to a person who was the aggressor or provoked another with the intent to cause the altercation or voluntarily entered into mutual combat, no matter how great the danger to personal security became during the altercation unless the right of self-defense is reestablished.” • Instruction 23: “A person who was the original aggressor or provoked another with intent to cause the altercation or voluntarily entered into mutual combat may regain the right to self-defense if that person withdrew or attempted to withdraw from the altercation and communicated his desire to withdraw to the other participant(s) in the altercation. If thereafter, the other participant(s) continued the altercation, the other participant(s) [would become] the aggressor(s). And the person who was the original aggressor or provoked another with the intent to cause the altercation or voluntarily entered into mutual combat is entitled to the defense of self-defense.” • Instruction 25: “A person is an aggressor when that person by his wrongful acts provokes, brings about, or continues an altercation. The use of words alone cannot make a person an aggressor.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hancock v. Trammell

2. “Plain errors are violations of legal rules clear from the appellate record that go to the foundation of the case or take from the defendant a right essential to his defense. Despite the creative exchange of theories for and against the District Court’s ruling, the State’s manifest purpose in offering evidence of the prior conviction and Appellant’s prior plea of self-defense was to attack the credibility of Appellant’s current plea of self-defense. The record as a whole shows the District Court weighed both the probative value of the evidence for this purpose and its prejudicial effect. Appellant’s prior conviction and his plea of self-defense were directly relevant to his credibility as a witness, as they tended to show that Appellant had minimized his responsibility when prosecuted in a previous. case and might do so again. We reject Appellant’s argument that by admitting the evidence under the particular facts and circumstances here the District Court committed plain error going to the foundation of the case or taking from Appellant a right essential to his defense.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hancock v. Trammell

3. “The record does not support a conclusion that Appellant's statements to Gould were "one continuing transaction with the event" or that Appellant uttered those statements under circumstances that "exclude the possibility of premeditation and fabrication." The proffered evidence also lacks the "substantial contemporaneity of the event and the statement" that negates "the likelihood of deliberate and conscious misrepresentation." Without these traditional assurances of the statement's reliability, which alone justify an exception to the hearsay rule, the District Court did not abuse its discretion by excluding the statements from evidence at trial.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2011 OK CR 8 - Taylor v. State