People v. Payne’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

43 federal appellate · 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 110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[S]omeone who intends to cause serious physical injury does not commit depraved indifference murder because the intended victim dies.... Thus, one who acts with the conscious intent to cause serious injury, and who succeeds in doing so, is guilty only of manslaughter in the first degree. Otherwise, every intentional manslaughter would also establish depraved indifference murder — a result plainly at odds with the discrete classifications set forth in the statute. Since a defendant who intends to injure or kill a particular person cannot generally be said to be “indifferent” — de-pravedly or otherwise — to the fate of that person, we underscore what we said in Payne: “a one-on-one shooting or knifing (or similar killing) can almost never qualify as depraved indifference murder.””

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Charriez v. Greiner · Fore v. Ercole

2. “depraved indifference murder may not be properly charged in the overwhelming majority of homicides that are prosecuted in New York. While we have identified instances in which a killing could qualify as depraved indifference murder, a point-blank shooting is ordinarily not one of them.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 558 F. Supp. 2d 480 - Fernandez v. Smith · Policano v. Herbert

3. “As the drafters of the Penal Law put it, depraved indifference murder is “extremely dangerous and fatal conduct performed without specific homicidal intent but with a depraved kind of wantonness: for example, shooting into a crowd, placing a time bomb in a public place, or opening the door of the lions’ cage in the zoo” (Denzer and McQuillan, Practice Commentary, McKinney’s Cons[olidated] Laws of NY, Book 39, Penal Law § 125.25, at 235 (1967)). Thus, if a defendant fatally shoots the intended victim once, it could be murder, manslaughter in the first or second degree or criminal negligence (or self-defense), but not depraved indifference murder. Moreover, it should be obvious that the more the defendant shoots (or stabs or bludgeons) the victim, the more clearly intentional is the homicide. Firing more rounds or inflicting more wounds does not make the act more depravedly indifferent, but more intentional. Absent the type of circumstances in, for example, Sanchez (where others were endangered), a one-on-one shooting or knifing (or similar killing) can almost never qualify as depraved indifference murder.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Melendez v. Kirkpatrick