Harris v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

67 federal appellate · 2 district · 73 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 144 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Many strong adjectives could be used but it was for the jury, and not the prosecutor, to say which witnesses were telling the truth.”

   9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Dews · United States v. Bess

2. “at best boring irrelevancies and a distasteful cliche type argument”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Austin · Sherrod v. United States

3. ““In short, Appellant invoked none of several possible methods for bringing these remarks to the attention of the trial judge who was best able to assess their effect on the jury and to undertake corrective measures. The problem of raising objections to improper argument of either counsel presents obvious practical difficulties. Counsel may, of course, object during the argument, but unless the departure from the proprieties is egregious neither the court nor the jury is likely to look favorably upon such an interruption at that stage. The more usual treatment is for counsel to approach the bench at the conclusion of the summing up. and request an immediate instruction to correct the impact of objectionable material. In the gravest situation it may be his duty to raise the issue of a mistrial. However, since none of these avenues was pursued here, we find no basis for reversal.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Perez