State v. Conner’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently August 2000 · most notably 60 Cal. 2d 631 - People v. Morse (1964), State v. Brown (1982)
56 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 State v. Dockery · State v. Marsh · State v. McMillan · Strickland v. State
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a positive instruction to put the irrelevant question, and matters relating thereto, out of their minds; for example, by having the court reporter read to the jury the pertinent part of the original charge bearing on the question of the right of the jury to recommend life imprisonment under application of the 1949 statutory amendment, and by further instruction in substance as follows: that the question of eligibility for parole is not a proper matter for the jury to consider and that it should be eliminated entirely from their consideration and dismissed from their minds; that in considering whether they should recommend life imprisonment, it is their duty to determine the question as though life imprisonment means exactly what the statute says: ‘imprisonment for life in the State’s prison,’ and that they should resolve the question of mitigation of punishment in the exercise of their unbridled discretion, wholly uninfluenced by considerations of what another arm of the government might do or might not do in the future by way of commutation, pardon, or parole.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Lee · State v. McNeil““It may be conceded as an established rule of law that where, as here, a jury is required to determine a defendant’s guilt and also to fix the punishment as between death and life imprisonment, to permit factors concerning the defendant’s possible parole to be injected into the jurors’ deliberations by argument of counsel or comment of the court is considered erroneous as being calculated to prejudice the jury and influence them against a recommendation of life imprisonment. S. v. Dockery, 238 N.C. 222 , 77 S.E. 2d 664 ;.... “The jurors should have been given a positive instruction to put the irrelevant question, and matters relating thereto, out of their minds;....””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Flippin
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.