Mathis v. State’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. “the phrase “criminal negligence” under the facts of this case, there is no likelihood that the omission affected the outcome of the trial. The instruction as given informed the jury that for it to find [Collymore] not guilty by reason of accident, there must be “no criminal scheme, undertaking, or intention.” [Collymore] now argues that the jury should have been informed instead that there must be “no criminal scheme, undertaking, intention, or criminal negligence.” Thus, the effect of the trial court’s omission was to remove from the jury’s consideration one factor, to wit, criminal negligence, that would be required for it to find that [Collymore] was not guilty by reason of accident. Put another way, what [Colly-more] now claims to be the proper instruction would require the jury to make an additional finding before it could find him not guilty than it had to do under the instruction given at trial. Accordingly, as the instruction given actually made it easier for the jury to acquit [Collymore] than the instruction he now prefers would, we cannot conclude that the omission of the term “criminal negligence” from the instruction on accident affected the outcome of his trial.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Collymore v. State