State v. Adams’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. ““Article 893, in pertinent part, provides that, after a defendant has been convicted of a non-capital felony, a sentencing judge “may suspend for the first conviction only the imposition or execution of any sentence * * n jg undisputed that the defendant had not been convicted of a felony before October 26,1981. On that morning, the trial court in one brief, uninterrupted proceeding, accepted the defendant’s guilty pleas and imposed the sentences. Although there were multiple charges, the pleas were taken contemporaneously and the sentences were all imposed at the same time. In fact, essentially one guilty plea was entered and one sentence imposed with respect to all charges. — [⅜ ⅜ ⅜ ] From the record presented, we cannot deduce that any one of the defendant’s convictions preceded the other. Even if we could, we do not think it is the legislative aim of Article 893 to base probation eligibility solely on such nice temporal distinctions. Rather our examination of Article 893 in comparison with other statutes with similar objectives indicates that the crucial inquiry is whether a defendant has been convicted of a felony before he committed the offense resulting in the sentence under consideration.” Id. at 672 . (Emphasis ours)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 635 So. 2d 509 - State v. Smith