Marcum v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ * * * the trial court properly advised the jury that if it believed beyond reasonable doubt that appellant had committed the prime offense, and further so believed that he had been convicted of local option offenses twice before — listing the respective dates of the convictions concerning which testimony had been adduced, and referred to in the indictment — the jury could assess punishment at confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than two years. KRS 242.990(1). This was appropriate as far as it went, but it was incomplete. The instruction failed to advise the jury that it had an option to believe from the evidence that 'appellant had been previously convicted on only one of the previous charges, in which event the statutory range of punishment would have been a fine * * " *. The failure to so instruct the jury was prejudicial error. Brown v. Commonwealth, Ky., 378 S.W.2d 608, 609 ; Tuttle v. Commonwealth, Ky., 331 S.W.2d 891, 893 . Upon another trial the word ‘offenses’ should be substituted for the word ‘felonies’ in the third instruction.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Rodgers v. Commonwealth