Denham v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Our interpretation of the habitual criminal statute, Section 1130, [now KR.S 431.190] has consistently been that the previous crimes and the one with which the accused is presently charged must have been committed progressively after each conviction. It is the commission of the second felony after conviction for the first, and the commission of the third felony after conviction of the second that is deemed to make the defendant an incorrigible. The indictment, the evidence and the instructions should make that status clear. [Citing cases.] “In this case the second count in the indictment charges that the accused had committed the crime of housebreaking with which he is charged in the first count subsequent to his conviction of the similar offense in 1926; and the third count charges that he had committed the principal crime set forth in the first count subsequent to his conviction of the felony of malicious stabbing and wounding in 1932. It does not charge that the crime of which he was convicted in 1932 was committed after his conviction in 1926. The instruction relating to the former convictions merely required that the jury should believe that the defendant had been previously convicted of the named felonies in 1926 and 1932 before the commission of the present crime and did not require that it should have believed that those crimes were successively committed after previous convictions.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Etherton v. Commonwealth