Smith v. Battaglia’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate ·

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

1. “Smith found himself in Illinois’s State-ville Correctional Center for his part in a shooting incident in February 1991. Three assailants, including Smith, fatally shot Charlotte Wilson and wounded Jerome Wilson and two onlookers. Smith and a co-defendant went to trial in a joint bench trial in August 1992. Smith was represented by Attorney Lawrence Vance. Vance began by telling the judge that the evidence would show that Smith was home on the evening in question with his female partner, who would be a witness in the case. This was the only defense Vance ever mentioned, but mysteriously, at the trial he did not call Smith’s partner, Carol Brown, as an alibi witness, even though she was in the courtroom and ready to testify that Smith had been with her at all relevant times. Jerome Wilson did testify, and he identified Smith as one of the shooters. (Years later, in April 1999, Wilson recanted this testimony in a sworn affidavit, in which he averred that he “did see the person who shot Charlotte Wilson and myself on the night of February 1, 1991, and it absolutely was not Jesse Smith.” Later, it seems, Wilson recanted the recantation, and so it is hard to say what story Wilson would give now.) The court found Smith guilty of one count of first-degree murder, for which it sentenced him to an extended term of 80 years’ imprisonment, and three counts of attempted first-degree murder, for which it imposed concurrent terms of 30 years each. The judgment of conviction was entered on D”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Smith v. Gaetz