Sellars v. Evans’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Garza ultimately held that, with respect to the asportation element of Georgia’s pre-2009 kidnapping statute, the movement necessary to establish asportation must be more than “merely incidental” to other criminal activity, and four judicially created factors must be considered before a court can conclude that more than “merely incidental” movement had occurred. Id. at 702 (1). Garza has since been superseded by statute for offenses occurring after July 1, 2009. OCGA § 16-5-40 (b) (2). However, because the rule created in Garza constituted a substantive change in the law with respect to the elements required to prove the crime of kidnapping at the time that the case was decided, the rule became retroactively applicable to cases such as the instant case. See, e.g., Hammond v. State, 289 Ga. 142, 143 (1) ( 710 SE2d 124 ) (2011) (A substantive change in case law “includes decisions that remove certain conduct from the reach of criminal statutes”) (citation omitted).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Wilkerson v. Hart