Commonwealth v. Pagano’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 11 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The prosecutor’s statement would not have been incorrect had he said that “the presumption of innocence ... creates for every [defendant a cloak, a covering, a protection ... unless and until evidence is presented ... which would convince [the jury] beyond a reasonable doubt that the presumption ... is nonexistent.” Here, however, the prosecutor, instead of saying in clear terms where the burden of proof lay, mangled the classical statement that the presumption of innocence continues throughout the case____By emphasizing that at the end of the trial the cloak comes off the prosecutor may have suggested the defendant had some burden to prove his innocence. It is constitutionally impermissible to shift the burden of proving an element of the crime to the defendant.”

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