Potter v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 10 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Unquestionably the leading case in support of the proposition that where the first of consecutive sentences is invalidated, the second valid sentence runs as of the date of the invalidation of the first is to be found in Massachusetts in which the view supported by the leading case is no longer the law. The leading case is Kite v. Commonwealth, supra, 1846 [11 Metc., Mass., 581], and the view expressed- there bearing the great name of Chief Justice Shaw was held to be dictum, and repudiated in Brown v. Commissioner of Correction, supra [ 336 Mass. 718 , 147 N.E.2d 782 ]. Annotation 68 A.L.R.2d 712 , 720-21; this is an illuminating annotation entitled ‘Effect of Invalidation of Sentence upon Separate Sentence which run consecutively.’ It seems that few courts of last resort have had occasion to pass upon the subject discussed in this annotation. “We think the view expressed in Brown v. Commissioner of Correction, supra, is sound law, and certainly ‘the better and more humane view,’ and we adopt it as law in this jurisdiction. We hold that when the sentence imposed upon Potter at the 13 August 1962 Term of Wayne County superior court was invalidated, the later sentence imposed upon him at the 20 August 1962 Term of Nash County superior court, which was to begin at the expiration of the sentence imposed upon him in Wayne County, commences from the first day of the term of the Nash County superior court when it was imposed.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Barrow v. North Carolina