Jackson v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

56 federal appellate · 27 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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[Tjhere is no way to evaluate . claims of undue and prejudicial intervention except by an examination of the entire transcript of the trial, which we have done, in order to be sure that we “guard against the magnification on appeal of instances which were of little importance in their setting.” At best it is difficult on appellate review to appraise the impact of intervention by the presiding judge and determine whether his participation exceeded permissible bounds. ... In this case the responses elicited by the judge were largely adverse to appellant. In itself this does not render the judicial intervention impermissible but in it were the seeds of tilting the balance against the accused and casting the judge, in the eyes of some jurors, on the side of the prosecution. This risk is always present when a presiding judge undertakes to interrogate witnesses at length. . On the whole record we cannot say, with that degree of assurance required in a criminal case, that the activities of the trial judge may not have prejudiced the defendant, notwithstanding the strong evidence presented against him. .”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Petway v. United States · State v. Clay