Mole v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In deciding whether or not this is such a substantial or prejudicial error as to warrant a reversal, we must determine what the error meant to the jury in relation to all else that happened. Ahlstedt v. United States of America, 5 Cir., 1963, 315 F.2d 62 . As we said in that case, quoting from Kotteakos v. United States, 1946, 328 U.S. 750 , 66 S.Ct. 1239 , 90 L.Ed. 1557 : “ Tf, when all is said and done, the conviction is sure that the error did not influence the jury, or had but very slight effect, the verdict and judgment should stand, except perhaps where the departure is from a constitutional norm of (sic) a specific command of Congress. * * But if one cannot say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error, it is impossible to conclude that substantial rights were not affected. The inquiry cannot be merely whether there was enough to support the result, apart from the phase affected by the error. It is rather, even so, whether the error itself had substantial influence. If so, or if one is left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand.’ ” Mole v. United States, 315 F.2d 156 , 158 (5th Cir. 1963).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Penn v. United States