Alston v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. “Each participant, prior to the actual combat, was willing to use lethal force when the opposing groups met. Each participant manifested depraved heart malice toward non-combatants when the two groups met and sought to kill each other as they previously had determined to do. There would have been no mutual combat, and no murder of an innocent person, but for the willingness of both groups to turn an urban setting into a battleground. In this sense each participant is present, aiding and abetting each other participant, whether friend or foe, in the depraved conduct.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 783 So. 2d 1129 - Reyes v. State · State v. Spates

2. “`The trial court found that defendant was the driver of the blue car and that Gary Clark fired the shot that resulted in Berry's death, but that defendant and Gary Clark were equally culpable for holding their shoot-out on the residential street where it was likely that other people could be shot and killed. The trial court also found that the shoot-out was mutually agreed to by defendant and Gary Clark and that defendant, at a minimum, intended to create a very high risk of death or great bodily harm with the knowledge that death or great bodily harm was the probable result of his act. Although the court found this intent sufficient to make the killing murder in the second degree, the court entered a verdict of involuntary manslaughter because the court was not satisfied that the prosecution proved that the mitigating circumstance of provocation did not exist in light of the evidence of the beating defendant underwent and the shots fired during his first encounter with the Clarks.'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 783 So. 2d 1129 - Reyes v. State

3. “had sufficient evidence from which it could find that all of the participants, driven by an unwritten code of macho honor, tacitly agreed that there would be mutual combat. The conclusion is supported by the evidence that the trouble began on Sunday, that following the events of Monday, Hall [a member of the defendant’s gang] found it necessary to go about armed, that D Nice [a member of the rival gang] fatalistically observed that more people would be hurt, and that the [defendant’s] group used the vicinity of Robert and Brunt Sts. as a staging area for the impending battle.”

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