21 Va. App. 702 - Tyler v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently October 2015
13 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on American Manufacturers Mutual Insurance v. United States · United States v. Powell · Illinois v. Vitale · Deboue v. Louisiana · Berry v. Louisiana
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As this Court has held, "[t]he fact that verdicts may, on their face, arguably appear inconsistent does not provide a basis to reverse either conviction on appeal, provided the evidence is sufficient to support each verdict." Pugliese v. Commonwealth, 16 Va.App. 82, 96 , 428 S.E.2d 16, 26 (1993) (citing United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 66 , 105 S.Ct. 471, 477 , 83 L.Ed.2d 461 . . . (1984) (emphasis added)). "Jury verdicts may appear inconsistent because the jury has elected through mistake, compromise, or lenity to acquit or to convict of a lesser offense for one charged crime that seems in conflict with the verdict for another charged offense." Pugliese, 16 Va. App. at 96 , 428 S.E.2d at 26 .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““ ‘The most that can be said in such cases is that the verdict shows that either in the acquittal or the conviction the jury did not speak their real conclusions, but that does not show that they were not convinced of the defendant’s guilt. We interpret the acquittal as no more than their assumption of a power which they had no right to exercise, but to which they were disposed through lenity.’ ” ... [Jjuries may reach inconsistent verdicts through mistake, compromise, or lenity, but in such instances it is “unclear whose ox has been gored,” the government’s or the defendant’s. For this reason and the fact that the government is precluded from appealing the acquittal verdict, the Court concluded that inconsistent verdicts should not provide the basis for an appeal by the defendant.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The justifications for allowing inconsistent verdicts are not diminished simply because the verdicts are entered at the conclusion of the guilt phase of a bifurcated trial instead of at the end of a unitary proceeding. In either a unitary or a bifurcated proceeding, mistake, lenity, or compromise may underlie the jury’s decision. Trial courts lack the authority to disturb inconsistent valid verdicts rendered at the conclusion of the guilt phase because such verdicts are final determinations of guilt or innocence. While the same jury may subsequently fail to reach a unanimous verdict in the punishment phase, this failure does not diminish the fact that the jury’s determinations of guilt became final verdicts at the moment they were unanimously reached.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.