House v. Bell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 federal appellate ·

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

1. “Now you may have an idea why he did it. The evidence at the scene which seemed to suggest that he was subjecting the lady to some kind of indignity, why would you get a lady out of her house, late at night, in her night clothes, under the trick that her husband has had a wreck down by the creek? Why is it that you want to get her down by the creek?.... It is either to keep her from telling what you have done to her, or it is that you are trying to get her to do something that she nor any mother on that road would want to do with Mr. House .... and you kill her because of her resistance.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. House v. Bell

2. “[T]he court's opinion expresses the court's belief that House's sentence must be overturned if `even 50 of 100... jurors would now seriously doubt the persuasiveness of the state's case.' ... However, it is as clear as the English language can make it that this is not the standard stated by Justice Stevens in the quotation above.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. In Re Gregory Lott, Movant

3. “Scholastic arguments aside, surely no one would really hold the view that House should be executed if 99 of 100, or even 50 of 100, jurors would now seriously doubt the persuasiveness of the state's case. In the real world of nonhypothetical juridical minds, only a new trial with real jurors will resolve such a problem.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. In Re Gregory Lott, Movant