Commonwealth v. Kaminsky’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Even if the trial judge placed an extra burden on appellant to reduce his conviction to voluntary manslaughter, the harmless nature of the error becomes clear in light of the subsequent voluntary manslaughter verdict. It can hardly be argued that if the jury had been given the correct charge on voluntary manslaughter, they would have been more inclined to find appellant not guilty. The only possible effect of the erroneous instruction was for the jury to think appellant had to prove more in order to convince them that he was only guilty of voluntary manslaughter; but he did convince them that this was the proper verdict despite the handicap. Thus the best verdict appellant could have received if the charge had been correct was the same one the jury actually rendered. Appellant argues that because compromise verdicts often occur in criminal cases, the introduction of the incorrect standard as to voluntary manslaughter might have affected the process by which the jury reached the compromise. However whether this was a compromise verdict is pure speculation; whether a different charge would have changed the ‘compromise’ ventures even further into the territory of the uncertain. It certainly does not seem appropriate for a court to declare an otherwise harmless error to be grounds for reversal on the basis of such conjecture.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 28 Md. App. 640 - Evans v. State