State v. Lamont L. Travis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

24 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “formed part of the basis for the sentence.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 387 Wis. 2d 686 - State v. Jahnke · State v. Danny Robert Alexander

2. “The United States Supreme Court provides the rubric we use in categorizing trial errors. The potentially harmless ones, it says, are those that "occur[ ] during presentation of the case to the jury and their effect may be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented in order to determine whether [they were] harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." Only a very limited number of errors "require automatic reversal," because "most constitutional errors can be harmless...." In fact, "there is a strong presumption that any ... errors that may have occurred are subject to harmless-error analysis." A "structural error," on the other hand, is not discrete. It is something that either affects the entire proceeding, or affects it in an unquantifiable way: Structural errors are different from regular trial errors because they "are structural defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism, which defy analysis by 'harmless-error' standards." Structural defects affect "[t]he entire conduct of the trial from beginning to end." An error also may be structural because of the difficulty of determining how the error affected the trial. So we recognize a structural error by how it "affect[s] the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than being simply an error in the trial process itself." That is to say, structural errors "permeate the entire process." Upon encountering structural error, we must reverse.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Angelica C. Nelson · 388 Wis. 2d 258 - Adams Cnty. Health & Human Servs. Dep't v. D.J.S. (In re E.W.D.)

3. “for other information to justify the sentence, both of which are forbidden by Tiepelman, Travis, and Lane. The State argues that the error was harmless because, 19 No. 2017AP2292-CR regardless of whether Coffee had a prior arrest for armed robbery, the circuit court's statements at sentencing remain accurate and the circuit court would have imposed the same sentence. We agree with the State. ¶41 We note that the postconviction court had the opportunity to address this issue. It made clear that its sentence would have been the same. The postconviction court concluded,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. State v. Donavinn D. Coffee