Murray v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 23 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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In Maryland narcotics addiction is not a crime, and- the defendant was not prosecuted for being an addict. Instead, he was tried and convicted of a violation of Code (1957), Art. 27, § 277, which prohibits one from manufacturing, possessing, controlling, selling, prescribing, administering, dispensing, or compounding any narcotic drug unless authorized by law to do so, and it is for possessing and controlling narcotics that the defendant is being punished. While the multiple offender statute, Code (1964 Supp.), Art. 27, § 300, applies to addicted and non-addicted alike, it does not, as the defendant claims, punish one for being an addict. Moreover, despite the apparent election of the defendant to ignore it, the law provides for the treatment, care and confinement of one charged with the commission of a criminal offense ‘who is habitually addicted to the use of narcotic drugs as that term is defined in § 276 of Article 27.’ Code (1964 Supp.), Art. 16, § 49. This statute does not make narcotics addiction a crime, nor is it punitive in nature. “The Robinson case, holding that a California statute that punished one for drug addiction was in violation of the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment, is clearly distinguishable from the present case. There the statute in question specifically made it unlawful for a person to be addicted to the use of narcotics. In Maryland, as we have seen, there is no statute making addiction a crime.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Martínez Rodríguez v. Delgado