Napier v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The Commonwealth’s attorney went so far as to say to the jury, if they should write a verdict under a manslaughter instruction, they might become an accessory to murder; and again, went so far as to say, over the objection of the court, for the testimony referred to was in no respect competent, that the defendant was a bootlegger, a moonshiner, and came in there claiming self-defense, and the worst thing that he said was that before the finding of the indictment they came in here to plead guilty and to beg for mercy; further, said that if you want to give him what he is entitled to, ‘hang this man until Hell freezes over;’ also said: ‘If they could not give him death to turn him loose;’ ‘that he had been going around here begging for a life sentence.’ It is true the court admonished the jury that such remarks were improper and not in the record and they should not consider them, but that could not and would not remove the effect of such a statement. Again, he said: ‘You go in and write a verdict and if you cannot write it for a death penalty, don’t write it at all;’ that what he wanted was the death penalty, and ‘if you cannot give him that, give him nothing and if you can’t do that, don’t do anything and if you won’t do it, I will get a jury from some other county that will write it.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Loyall v. Commonwealth