Davis v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Pursuant to the mandate of the Supreme Court of the United States we have considered both appellant Spraggins’ sentence of death which rests upon Code Ann. § 27-2534.1(b)(7) and Davis’ sentence of death which rests partially upon Code Ann. § 27-2534.1(b)(7). We find material differences between Godfrey and the cases under review which distinguish this murder from the murder in Godfrey and from other “ordinary murders” for which the death penalty is not appropriate. See generally, Hance v. State, 245 Ga. 856 ( 268 S.E.2d 339 ) (1980); Dampier v. State, addendum, 245 Ga. 882 ( 268 S.E.2d 349 ) (1980). Unlike the murder in Godfrey, death was not instantaneous, the victim was not related to either defendant, and the victim was in no way threatening or hostile to the defendants. Both defendants had planned to rob the victim. Thereafter the defendants fled and made every effort to conceal their crimes. Code Ann. § 27-2534.1(b)(7) provides in pertinent part: “The offense of murder ... was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim.” In Davis v. State, supra, and Spraggins v. State, supra, we held that the jury’s finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the “murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind of the defendant or aggravated battery to the victim” was supported by the evidence. The evidence shows that the victim was raped”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Davis v. Kemp