Houston v. Dutton’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

31 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) The victim was under 12 and the defendant over 18; (2) The murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel and involved torture; (3) The murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding prosecution; and (4) The murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in committing and fleeing after committing aggravated rape and aggravated kidnapping.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Coe v. Bell · 181 F. Supp. 2d 832 - Black v. Bell

2. “Tennessee is a 'weighing' state--that is, the jury determines whether any aggravating circumstances have been established beyond a reasonable doubt by the State and then balances this against any mitigating circumstances found by the individual jurors. If the jury unanimously finds that the aggravators outweigh the mitigators, death must be imposed.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Coe v. Bell · Thompson v. Bell

3. “If a deadly weapon is handled in a manner so as to make the killing a natural or probable result of such conduct, then that may be considered by you as to the existence of malice sufficient to support a conviction of murder in the second degree unless it is rebutted by other facts and circumstances.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Coe v. Bell · Miller v. Colson