Guzman v. Greene’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 1 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “New York depraved indifference murder law is defined as follows: “Under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, [the defendant] recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person.” N.Y. Penal Law § 125.25 (2). “A person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. A person who creates such a risk but is unaware thereof solely by reason of voluntary intoxication also acts recklessly with respect thereto.” N.Y. Penal Law § 15.05 (3).”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Charriez v. Greiner · 497 F. Supp. 2d 452 - Rustici v. Philips

2. “[S]omeone who intends to cause serious physical injury does not commit depraved indifference murder because the intended victim dies.... Thus, one who acts with the conscious intent to cause serious injury, and who succeeds in doing so, is guilty only of manslaughter in the first degree. Otherwise, every intentional manslaughter would also establish depraved indifference murder — a result plainly at odds with the discrete classifications set forth in the statute. Since a defendant who intends to injure or kill a particular person cannot generally be said to be “indifferent” — de-pravedly or otherwise — to the fate of that person, we underscore what we said in Payne: “a one-on-one shooting or knifing (or similar killing) can almost never qualify as depraved indifference murder.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Charriez v. Greiner · Fore v. Ercole

3. “unlike [in] Policano, the defendant, even if `recklessly creating a grave risk of death,' was not `creating a virtual certainty of death born of an intent to kill.' Policano, 430 F.3d at 89 (internal citation omitted)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Policano v. Herbert