230 Md. App. 157 - Ray v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 6 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Between the plea bargain and the contract there is an enigmatic attraction-but-rejection relationship. In these “yes, but” discussions the reader is very much left at sea. Shall we swim to the shore—or back to the ship? This indeterminate status of principles of contract interpretation can create a troubled middle ground when it comes to applying the principles to a given plea agreement. In terms of sometimes lacking analytic balance on the subject, appellate opinions themselves have not been without sin. Those opinions holding a defendant not bound by the arguably binding terms of his plea agreement stress the dissimilarities between the two contexts and tend to ignore totally the similarities that might cut the other way. Conversely, the opinions holding a defendant bound by the terms of the plea agreement stress the similarities between the two contexts and tend to ignore the dissimilarities. What is desperately needed is the appreciation that 1) the construing of a plea agreement is not, to he sure, slavishly controlled by contract principles but that 2) contract principles may nonetheless control a given outcome and may not be blithely repudiated or ignored.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ray v. State

2. “Now, on the first count, conspiracy to commit theft, the Court will impose a sentence of 10 years to the Maryland Department of Corrections; I’ll suspend all but four years and that will be concurrent with the sentence in the Hagers-town case.[ 2 ] Now, with the false statement ..., the Court will impose a sentence of six months, which is the maximum sentence in that particular case, and that will be concurrent with the sentence in Count 1. Upon release, [Petitioner] will be on a period of probation of four years supervised probation.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ray v. State

3. “Rather than accept the defendant’s subjective version of what his understanding actually was, however, we prefer to determine objectively what a reasonable non-lawyer’s version of the deal would have been under circumstances similar to those of the defendant, confining the knowledge of that hypothetical reasonable man to that which was formally on the record of the hearing on the acceptance of the plea.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 231 Md. App. 533 - Butler & Duncan v. State