Policano v. Herbert’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 1 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[W]e decide not whether the state court correctly interpreted the doctrine of federal law on which the claim is predicated, but rather whether the state court’s interpretation was unreasonable in light of the holdings of the United States Supreme Court at the time. Policano v. Herbert, 507 F.3d 111, 115 (2d Cir.2007)”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. People v. Battles · 774 F. Supp. 2d 534 - Seda v. Conway

2. “[U]nder Register — and until we started to recast “under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life” post-Sanchez — where both intentional and depraved indifference murder were charged in one-on-one shootings or knif-ings, these counts were submitted to the jury for it to sort out the defendant’s state of mind unless there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the defendant might have acted unintentionally. That a defendant’s acts virtually guaranteed the victim’s death did not, in and of itself, preclude a guilty verdict on a theory of depraved indifference. To the contrary and as the dissenters in both Register and Sanchez vociferously protested, under the Register formulation the very facts establishing a risk of death approaching certainty and thus presenting compelling circumstantial ev idence of intent — for example, a pointblank shooting of the victim in the head — likewise demonstrated depraved indifference.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Fore v. Ercole

3. “New York depraved indifference murder law is defined as follows: “Under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, [the defendant] recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person.” N.Y. Penal Law § 125.25 (2). “A person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. A person who creates such a risk but is unaware thereof solely by reason of voluntary intoxication also acts recklessly with respect thereto.” N.Y. Penal Law § 15.05 (3).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Charriez v. Greiner