Commonwealth v. Redmond’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 2 district · 27 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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[N]o general statement of the charges can remedy a specific instruction which is defective 'unless the general statement clearly indicates that its consideration must be imported into the defective instruction' "). The error does not, however, require automatic reversal of the defendant's conviction as he suggests. "Although constitutional error, the omission of an element of the crime from the jury instruction is not among the very limited class of structural errors subject to automatic reversal, and upon proper objection would be subject to harmless error analysis.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. McCray · 95 Mass. App. Ct. 406 - Commonwealth v. Mitchell

2. “there was a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice, because the failure to apprise the jury that the defendant must have intended to use the implement to commit the burglary might have resulted in the jury finding the defendant guilty of an act that was not criminal -- mere possession of a pocketknife without the intent to use it as a burglarious implement.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 95 Mass. App. Ct. 406 - Commonwealth v. Mitchell

3. “could ... 'be inferred if the act [was] merely wrongfully done without just cause or excuse,' " whereas malice under the malicious destruction of property statute entailed, "[i]n addition to the intent to inflict injury to property, ... a state of mind infused with cruelty, hostility or revenge.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Pena v. Sessions