State v. Houston’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

62 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 64 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[w]hen we review an attorney's failure to object to a prosecutor's statements during closing argument, the question is 'not whether the prosecutor's comments were proper, but whether they were so improper that counsel's only defensible choice was to interrupt those comments with an objection.'”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Ringstad · State v. Shepherd

2. “correct an illegal sentence ... or a sentence imposed in an illegal manner”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Bond · State v. Johnson

3. “[Nlo majority of [the Utah Supreme Court] has ever adopted an independent' standard of proportionality under article 1, section 9 of the Utah Constitution, For the most part we have simply conflated the state and federal standards and treated them as indistinguishable. ... And the sole exception to that rule is Gardner, in which a majority of the court refused to embrace any. 1ndependent state. standard.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Howell