White v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 370 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 377 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “placed [the defendant] in a position of grave peril to which he should not have been subjected.”

   10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. DUVOSE v. State · Games v. State

2. “[W]hen it is apparent that the `sole purpose of calling the witness was to wield the evidential harpoon, deliberately calculated by counsel to prejudice the jury against the defendant and his defense,' an admonishment cannot cure the error and a mistrial should be declared.”

   7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Riley v. State · Davis v. State

3. ““[I]f one cannot say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error, it is impossible to conclude that substantial rights were not affected. The inquiry cannot be merely whether there was enough to support the result, apart from the phase affected by the error. It is rather, even so, whether the error itself had substantial influence. If so, or if one is left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand.” Kotteakos v. United States, (1946) 328 U.S. 750, 765 , 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1248 , 90 L.Ed. 1557, 1566-7 .”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Hill v. State · Roberts v. State