28 Md. App. 732 - Burko v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Notwithstanding that error, it was an error in a vacuum — a purely academic error — as far as this particular case is concerned. As we further analyzed in Evans (Part IF and Part IIH), Mullaney v. Wilbur will not be applied where ‘there was an erroneous allocation of the burden of persuasion on the questions of mitigation, justification or excuse but where they were not issues in the case.’ ” “After citing Maryland precedents in this regard in Street v. State, 26 Md. App. 336, 340-341 , 338 A. 2d 72 (where an erroneous allocation of the burden of persuasion on the question of self-defense was held to be immaterial where no fair jury question had been generated as to self-defense), and O’Connor v. State, 234 Md. 459, 461 , 199 A. 2d 807 (where an erroneous allocation of the burden of persuasion on the question of insanity was held to be immaterial where no fair jury question had been generated as to insanity), we concluded, ‘Erroneous instructions on non-issues are self-evidently immaterial.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jones v. State