State v. Johnson’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. “When a court construes a criminal statute, it may invoke a principle known as the “rule of lenity” when the statute is open to more than one interpretation and the court is otherwise unable to determine which interpretation was intended by the [General Assembly]. Instead of arbitrarily choosing one of the competing interpretations, the court selects the interpretation that treats the defendant more leniently. The rule of lenity is not so much a tool of statutory construction as a default device to decide which interpretation prevails when the tools of statutory construction fail. [[Image here]] The “rule of lenity” is not a rule in the usual sense, but an aid for dealing with ambiguity in a criminal statute. Under the rule of lenity, a court confronted with an otherwise unresolvable ambiguity in a criminal statute that allows for two possible interpretations of the statute will opt for the construction that favors the defendant. For a court construing a statute, the rule of lenity is not a means for determining—or defeating—legislative intent. Rather, it is a tie-goes-to-the-runner device that the court may turn to when it despairs of fathoming how the General Assembly intended that the statute be applied in the particular circumstances. It is a tool of last resort, to be rarely deployed and applied only when all other tools of statutory construction fail to resolve an ambiguity. This follows from the fact that our goal in construing statutes is always to ascertain and carry ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Bellard v. State

2. “Because only one predicate felony is required to support a felony murder conviction, once the State proves a predicate felony and the death of the victim as a result of that felony, the crime of felony murder is complete, and, for the required evidence test’s purposes, all of felony murder’s elements have been satisfied such that the elements of any additional predicate felonies would be redundant. In other words, once one merger for sentencing purposes occurs, as to felony murder and one predicate felony, the elements of any additional predicate felonies are no longer required elements of felony murder. For the required evidence test’s purposes, the pairing of the conviction for one predicate felony with the felony murder conviction leaves no room for a pairing with any additional predicate felonies. In sum, once the conviction for one predicate felony merges, application of the required evidence test does not result in further merger of convictions for other predicate felonies.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Twigg v. State