Perry v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

34 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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““But defendant’s complaint is that the burden was too heavily laid upon him, that he should not have been required to prove the named elements of self-defense to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury, but that he met the requirements of the law if his evidence created a reasonable doubt as to whether he acted, in .self-defense, and the latest decisions of this court have been in accord with this contention. McGhee v. State [ 178 Ala. 4 , 59 So. 573 ], supra; Roberson v. State, 183 Ala. 43 , 62 So. 837 ; Ex parte State ex rel. Attorney General, In re Baker v. State, 210 Ala. 374 , 98 So. 215 . True, the court also instructed the jury to acquit if, upon the whole evidence, that tending to support the plea of self-defense included, they entertained a reasonable doubt' whether the defendant had acted in self-defense; but, as to that, it is complained that, by refusing to change its instruction on this point when exceptions were reserved, the court added emphasis to its erroneous statement of the law (Berry v. State, 209 Ala. 120 , 95 So. 453 ), and that the trial eourl could not avoid a reversal by charging the law in contradictory ways, for, in such ease, the jury would not know which instruction to follow (Roberson v. State, 183 Ala. 60 , 62 So. 837 ). We apprehend the trial court in tended no ambiguous statement of tbe law — • in fact there are decisions of this court which may seem to sustain the court’s method of stating the law of self-defense to the jury; but, in view of”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 24 Ala. App. 168 - Lee v. State