State v. Joyner’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

63 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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “When a person commits a robbery by the use or threatened use of an implement which appears to be a firearm or other dangerous weapon, the law presumes, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that the instrument is what his conduct represents it to be-an implement endangering or threatening the life of the person being robbed.”

   15 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Williams · 188 N.C. App. 744 - State v. Marshall

2. “(a) Any person . . . who, having in possession or with the use or threatened use of any firearms or other dangerous weapon, implement or means, whereby the life of a person is endangered or threatened, unlawfully takes or attempts to take personal property from another . . . shall be guilty of a Class D felony.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Bell · 78 N.C. App. 405 - State v. Wiggins

3. “[a]ll of the evidence to which the defendant directs our attention, when taken together, amounted to some evidence from which the jury could but was not required to infer that the [gun] was unloaded ... at the time of the robbery and that no life was endangered or threatened. As a result, the mandatory presumption of danger or threat to life arising from the defendant’s use of what appeared to the victim to be a firearm or other dangerous weapon disappeared leaving a mere permissive inference to that effect. The result was that the jury was free to infer either that the disputed element of the offense of armed robbery did or did not exist. The trial court correctly provided for both possibilities when it properly instructed the jury that they were to consider possible verdicts of guilty of armed robbery, guilty of the lesser included offense of common law robbery and not guilty. The evidence relied upon by the defendant, however, was not so compelling as to make the use of the permissive inference of danger or threat to life inappropriate in the present case or to require the trial court to enter a directed verdict in the defendant’s favor on the charge of armed robbery.”

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