Patten v. Florida’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 55 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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Petitioner was deprived of a jury's life recommendation without any court having found that advisory verdict unreasonable. Under Florida law, a 6-to-6 vote is a life recommendation. See Rose v. State, supra, at 525. When the trial judge received the jury's note indicating that it was deadlocked 6 to 6, there was therefore nothing left for him to do but recall the jury and apply the Tedder [ v. State, 322 So.2d 908 (Fla.1975)] standard to its life recommendation. I can scarcely believe that the trial judge would have overridden such a recommendation in this case; had he done so, he doubtless would have been reversed on appeal. But instead, the trial judge altered the verdict by giving an Allen charge. Then, even while holding the judge to have erred in giving the charge, the Florida Supreme Court proceeded to disregard the fact that the jury's deadlock was a finding for defendant on the issue of death. The Supreme Court's decision to remand was not based upon any finding that a life sentence was unreasonable. The Supreme Court remanded only because the jury's report of a 6-to-6 deadlock had not been contained in a formal recommendation. Since I do not believe that this adherence to formalism is consistent with the double jeopardy concerns implicated by the Supreme Court's demand that petitioner convince yet another jury that he does not deserve to die, I must dissent from this Court's refusal to hear this case.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Rose v. State

2. “for a new sentencing proceeding before a jury because the trial judge erroneously instructed the jury that it should try to reach a majority verdict after the jury had advised the court it was deadlocked concerning its sentencing recommendation for the first-degree murder conviction.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 678 F. Supp. 1567 - Patton v. Dugger

3. “the trial judge should have advised the jury that it was not necessary to have a majority reach a sentencing recommendation because, if seven jurors do not vote to recommend death, then the recommendation is life imprisonment.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 641 So. 2d 378 - Derrick v. State