Coble v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 71 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 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Jared Levi Coleman v. State · James R. Thompson v. State

2. “Karen Vicha was [Coble’s] third wife. They were married in July 1988 and lived in a house down the road from her brother and across the street from her parents. [Coble] was almost forty years old. The marriage quickly disintegrated, 1 and after a year, Karen told [Coble] to move out. She wanted a divorce. [Coble] attempted to talk her out of this decision and would randomly call her and show up at her work place. [Coble] then kidnapped Karen as a further effort to dissuade her from divorcing him. He hid in the trunk of her car while she was at a bar one evening with a girlfriend. When Karen started to drive home, [Coble] folded down the back seat and “popped out of the trunk with a knife.” He jumped over the console, halfway into the front seat, and stuck the knife against Karen’s ribs. He told her to keep driving until they came to a field. Karen stopped the car, and [Coble] said that if he couldn’t have her, then no one else could. He pulled out a roll of black electrical tape, but Karen kept talking, and, after about two hours, she convinced him that she would recon sider the divorce issue. He let her go, and she called her brother, Bobby, who was a police officer. Bobby told Karen to report the kidnapping. After he arrested [Coble] for kidnapping Karen, Officer James Head looked in his patrol-car mirror and saw [Coble] staring at him with a look that “made the hair on the back of [his] head stand up.” He got “the heebie-jeebies.” [Coble] muttered something like “They’re g”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Billie Coble v. Lorie Davis, Director

3. “1. the circumstances of the capital offense, including the defendant’s state of mind and whether he or she was working alone or with other parties; 2. the calculated nature of the defendant’s acts; 3. the forethought and deliberateness exhibited by the crime’s execution; 4. the existence of a prior criminal record, and the severity of the prior crimes; 5. the defendant’s age and personal circumstances at the time of the commission of the offense; 6. whether the defendant was acting under duress or the domination of another at the time of the commission of the offense; 7. psychiatric evidence; and 8. character evidence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Devoe, Paul Gilbert